Google is 20 years old! And here are 20+ interesting facts about the company that you didn't know for sure

Today, the Internet giant Google turned 20 years old! On this wonderful day, we want to remember the most significant moments in the history of the company and tell you about some amazing facts that you didn't know for sure. Read about goat employees, dislike of cats, millionaire chef and much more in our material.

A source: The Guardian

Google's First Major Team

To begin with, let's remember how it all began ... in 1996, students of Stanford University Larry Page and Sergey Brin started their experiments with the PageRank search algorithm. With its help, it was possible to rank pages in search results not only by the frequency of keywords, as it was at that time, but also by the authority of sites.

Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin

To do this, the system automatically checked the number of backlinks to the resource. The more of them — the higher the web page became in the output. First, in order to find out how many sites have put a link, for example, to stanford.edu , it was necessary to check all the pages of the Internet manually, and this, as you can guess, is a colossal work.

The first Google Server built from Lego

The convenience of the system was immediately appreciated by friends and acquaintances of novice geniuses. As a result, the first full-fledged version of the site appeared on the domain Stanford University. Then it was located on the domain google.stanford.edu . Over time, Google began to demand too much capacity, so the IT department staff asked Page and Brin to leave. Then the friends had to move into the garage of the future YouTube executive director Susan Vodziski.

The garage where Google's office was located

20 years have passed and now Google manages millions of servers around the world, is considered the most powerful and most expensive brand, and its home page google.com — the most visited on the Internet.

Today, for the 20th anniversary of Google, they made such a cool thing in Street View. Right now you can go to the garage there, where in '98 two students began to create an era and created a legendary search engine.

All this is very good, but there are more interesting facts about the company that you have hardly heard of before.

In 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to sell Google for $ 1 million to Yahoo! Hoping to make a deal with representatives of the Internet giant of that time, they went to the Silicon Valley office of the firm. But then from Google's purchase of Yahoo! they refused, which they later regretted more than once… According to data for 2018, Google's assets have long passed the $200 billion mark.

During the year, Google releases about 1000 doodles dedicated to various events. The company's first doodle, which appeared in 1998, depicted a burning man. Thus, the creators informed users that they were going to the Burning Man festival and would not be able to respond promptly to all messages.

When there were only 40 people at Google headquarters, they hired a chef. During his years of service, Charlie Ayers managed to build a good career: by the time he left the company, he had 10 cafes located at Google headquarters and more than 150 employees at his disposal.

In 2004, Google became the second largest public company (after Apple), which put up for sale part of its shares. Thanks to this, thousands of employees of the company became millionaires, including a masseuse who worked there in 1999. Initially, the salary of this woman was $ 450 per week.

The "I'm lucky" button appeared in 1998 and immediately attracted many users. With its help, you can get not to the page with the search results, but directly to the site where the information used in the request is presented. But here's the bad luck — every year, due to the lack of advertising due to the "fault" of this button, Google loses about $ 100 million.

Google could be called googol. This term in the numeral system denotes the number depicted on the letter as one with one hundred zeros. However, when filling out the company's technical documents, an error occurred and it thus turned into Google.

If an employee of the company dies, his next of kin receive 50% of his salary for another 10 years.

The company employs... goats! These horned ones perform a special role — they graze on the lawn and fertilize the soil with their excrement. Google even has a shepherd at its headquarters who takes care of animals. He also has a dog specially trained for this purpose.

As for dogs, Google employees have a special love for them. But to cats — on the contrary. Even the company's code states that it is "canine". What is the reason for this is unknown.

As you know, Mozilla Corporation is one of Google's competitors and the Internet giant pays the developer $ 300 million a year for using its search engine on the main page of the Firefox browser.

What moment in Google's history interested you the most?