50 Interesting Facts about Google

A small, single story building (Corporation Trust Center) at 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, DE is the registered home of over 6,500 corporations and 200,000 businesses, such as Google, American Airlines, Apple, GM, Coca-Cola, KFC, Verizon Internet Services, and Deutsche Bank.

27. Google wants to stop people using the term "Google" as a verb meaning to search something up with an internet search engine. They believe that due to brand recognition, Google will become a generic term, and hence cost them the legal right to a trademark.

28. In 2005, Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar started a coordinated effort to push down their workers’ wages.

29. In 2004, Google anonymously posted math equations on billboards in Harvard Square and Silicon Valley that if solved led to a website with another equation, which in turn allowed you to submit your resume.

30. Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button loses them an estimated $110 million in ad revenue every year.

When there is a disputed border, Google maps tailors its maps to the claims of each country where the Internet browser is located.

32. Google founded Calico, an anti-aging company designed to ultimately cure death.

33. When C-SPAN asked for illegal copies of Stephen Colbert's controversial 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner speech to be removed from Youtube, Google bought the rights to the video and thereby saved the viral videos which were already watched 2.7 million times in under 48 hours.

34. A UK teenager secretly painted a p*nis on top of his house and was caught over a year later when his parents looked at their house on Google Earth.

35. Google's Artificial-Intelligence Bot says the purpose of living is 'to live forever'.

Google sent a lone employee to map an entire abandoned Japanese island (Gunkanjima, Japan aka Hashima), which was once the most densely-populated place on Earth.

37. Google avoided $2 billion in taxes in 2012, by transferring royalty payments from its Irish and Dutch subsidiaries to a Bermuda unit, which was simply headquartered in a local law firm.

38. Google has invested over $500 million in a secretive start-up company called Magic Leap, who aims to release retinal display VR devices.

39. When Google built a neural network and connected it to YouTube, it spontaneously taught itself to recognize cats with 74.8% accuracy.

40. When a Google employee dies their spouses receive half pay from the company for 10 years and their children receive 1,000 dollars per month until they are at least 19.

Shaq was one of the original investors in Google and Vitaminwater but passed up on Starbucks because he didn't drink coffee.

42. In late 2004, Samsung had the opportunity to buy Android but passed on the investment because they did not see any potential. Google acquired it two weeks later.

43. The pacemaker, fridges, WiFi and Google Maps are all Australian inventions.

44. Bahrain's government banned Google Earth because it allowed Bahraini citizens to see vast tracts of royal-owned land and palaces next to poor and overcrowded Shi'ite villages.

45. Conservationist Marc Gross uses Google Earth and drones to shoot elephants with Capsaicin paintballs, deterring them from poachers.

Tribes in the Amazon are using technology like GPS and Google Earth to map their lands, monitor for illegal logging and mining, and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions including knowledge of medicinal plants.

47. Yahoo turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million in 1997.

48. Google hires programmers through their own search engine.

49. Iran's largest airport had a Star of David embedded into its roof for 30 years before it was discovered through Google Earth.

50. Most "Locksmiths" advertising through google are scams operated by organized crime. They have effectively dominated the market through this strategy and run the legitimate guys out of business.