CorpComms Magazine

I hear it's Google's birthday, how old is it now?

Today Google turned 13.

It's pretty big for 13, isn't it?

Yes, and it's probably the only teenager to have made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb. 'Google (vt): To use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet'.

So how has the search engine marked the occasion?

Its homepage features a Google birthday doodle, where the letters that make up 'Google' have been made into characters that sit around a table with a birthday cake with 13 candles on it. The characters wear party hats and are surrounded by balloons and presents.

When did it start doing doodles?

The search engine first started doing doodles in August 1998.

So how did Google start?

Well, PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Stanford University in California began Google as a project in 1996, but it did not formerly become finalised and called Google until 1998.

And why did they call it Google?

It was something to do with the word 'googol' which is the mathematical term for the number one followed by 100 zeros.

You would have to be a PhD student for a play on words like that to be amusing!

It isn't meant to be amusing. It is meant to represent the vast amount of information that is out there.

Right...so when was the Google.com domain actually registered?

On 15 September 1998.

So we've established Google is big, how big is it?

It is responsible for 90 per cent of the global Internet search market, and that's saying something.

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