Search engine giant, Google, celebrates its 12th birthday today. In honor of that, here are a few fun facts about the company.
The name "Google," is actually a play on the word "googol," which is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflects the immense volume of information that exists, and the scope of Google’s mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Google began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.
Google runs more than one million servers in data centers around the world and processes over one billion search requests and 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day.
Google employs nearly 20,000 people and Google’s numerous offices worldwide have foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes.
The term “google” is an official verb in the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary and means "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."
There you have it. Happy Birthday, Google!