Google

Google was created in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I did not know that it was first created in 1995 with the name Backrub. I am so used to using Google and could not imagine a life without it. My parents did not grow up with Google. I use it every day. After listening to one of my classmates talk about the history I wanted to learn more about it. 

According to Alexa google is the most visited website in the world. I do not doubt that one bit, as I go on google at least twice a day. Up until 2015, their mission statement was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Their unofficial statement was “Don’t be evil.” They later replaced their statement in 2015 with “Do the right thing.” Which I find that very fascinating because the company is often being called out for their privacy settings. People sometimes say what they are doing with gathering info from their user is not right. 

Another thing I find fascinating about google was the name itself. Apparently, the name was a play on words “googol.” “Googol” refers to a math term for a number 1 followed by 100 zeros. One might think why that would have anything to do with Google, but it reflects the mission statement to organize the infinite amount of information on the internet. 

When I was googling “what I need to know about google” I came across an article titled “19 Crazy Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Google”. The one fact that I found most interesting was fact number 9. Apparently, Gmail was launched on April Fool’s Day. It was taken as a hoax but now it is used my billions of users every day. Another interesting fact was fact number 14. The first time the name was used as a verb, “to google”, was on October 15, 2002 on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Crazy to think that a phrase we use every day was first said on a TV show while fighting vampires. To read the full article click here. Watch this video Google put out for their 20th birthday to learn more about it.