Google is celebrating it’s 8th birthday today! Also, while I was in LA last week, I stopped by the Google office in Santa Monica to take some pictures. Yeah, their Headquarters are in Mountain View, but those letters are simply irresistible. I’m such a nerd.
I remember back in high school, when my economics teacher asked me to scour the internet for all the search engines I could find so that he could find what he was looking for. I assembled a list of about 15 search engines, such as Yahoo, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Excite, and some obscure sites in Asia as well. Each search engine had its own algorithms that gave different results, and some were better than others. Like shopping around at different markets to get everything you need for your pantry, doing good searches involved a bit of searching around with various engines.
Then came Google in 1998. Google quickly rose to the top as the most efficient search engine out there, although I didn’t hear about it until 2000. One of my entomology course instructors recommended that we use the Google Image search to find pictures for a web project we were assigned to do. Shortly thereafter, I was hooked. Google could find everything, it seemed.
Google was originally intended to be named after the “Googol,” a number that is often described as 1 followed by 100 zeros, or 10 to the 100th power. (10^100) It is estimated that there are fewer than a googol particles in the known universe. Definitely a fun number to name a search engine after. However, a spelling mistake on a bank check sealed this search engine’s fate as “Google.” When I first looked for Google, I logically typed in the correct spelling, arriving at www.googol.com, which explained that they weren’t a search engine. Now it’s a lame-looking math site with no explanation.
Today, Google offers tons of search services, from Google Images, to Google Maps, Google Scholar (sweet) and the new Google Video, all keeping to the simple uncluttered format that makes it easy to use. And they’re always finding new ways to apply their search engine to new tasks. Google Cache is one of the most ingenious and useful services, especially when people like creationists and magicians try to cover their tracks. Check out their Lab where you can find Google Trends, Google Mars, and even Google Transit.
You can get Google on your computer, on your website, or for your business network, and then there is the Google Base where you can upload information directly to them. Maybe someday there will be Google House to help you find the remote, and Google Implants to search your body for disease, or help you recall your memories. Resistance is Futile.
Perhaps the most impressive achievement is that google has become an acceptable verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. We just don’t say “search for X” anymore. Now it’s “Google X.” Makes you wonder why Star Trek never had a Google toolbar on their viewscreens. Google This. Thanks for all the searches and happy birthday Google.
