Google is finally a teenager now! Thirteen years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially filed Google Inc. Although at that time they weren't really sure about the name Google, but since they had to deposit a check from an investor for the company, they just went ahead and started something that even 13 years later never ceases to amaze us.

Google is almost omnipresent and irrespective of age, sex or nationality...everyone is aware of that one term that holds answers to everything: 'Google it!'.

While compiling this list I came across some familiar facts, and learnt some interesting stuff about my favorite company in the whole wide web. :) Have a look and do share your interesting Google experiences with us:



First Google Doodle













First Google Doodle (Burning Man Festival) was in a way an 'out of office' message by Google's founders, Larry page and Sergey Brin. The duo was off to Nevada for Burning Man festival in 1998 and through this Doddle they wanted users to know that in case of any technical issues, they will not be able to fix it.

Source


Google Is A Dog Person





Unlike majority of internet users out there, Google is more of a dog person and they allow employees to bring their dogs to work. The image above is one of Google's Top Dog: Yoshka, who belongs to Google's Senior VP, operations.























Google's Dog Policy

"Google's affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we're a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out. For more on this, see our Dog Policy."

Check out this blog post by Yoshka.


Googleplex & Googlers


























Google's headquaters is known as Googleplex and its employees are referred to as “Googlers”. The new joinees however are known as 'Nooglers' and they have one thumb rule: “When you've been around longer than 1% of the staff, you cease being a Noogler.” A former Googler is known as 'Xoogler'.
























20% Time

Google encourages its engineers to spend 20% of their working hours on their personal projects and ideas. 50% of Google's products emerge from that 20% time, Gmail being a well known example that was result of this policy and also widely used Google News. They may not be too proud, but Orkut is also a result of 20% time.



Google Loves Food

















There is a rule in Google's office, that no Googler, should have to go more than 100 feet for food! Therefore, they always have a small kitchen filled with snacks and expresso machine.


Moma
















Google's company wide intranet is called “moma” and they also have a cafe named after it in their Mountain View campus.
















We love that clean interface that Google uses, which was result of founders' lack of HTML knowledge and they wanted to create a quick interface.



Most Used Word

American Dialect Society members voted 'google' to be the most useful word of the year in 2002. (Source)


PageRank

As a website owner we all know the importance of PageRank, it is the value of a page within Google but did you know that Page rank is in fact named after Google's co-founder Larry Page?



Google's First Check























Andy Bechtolsheim (co-founder Sun Microsystems) was the first person to invest in Google. After hearing the idea from Page and Brin, Andy signed a check of $100,000 for Google Inc. At that time Google Inc. had not been registered yet, so the check was lying in Page's drawer for almost 2 weeks.


Google's First Office
























Google's first office was a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki who let Larry and Sergey rent her garage for $1700 a month. Google later bought the entire house and hired Susan as their 18th employee.

Susan became VP of product management for Google and is also one of the brains behind Google successful AdSense project; she is currently Sr. VP of Ads with Google. Her sister Anne later married Google's co-founder Brin. (Source)

You can still have look at the house through a Google Maps link.