11 Things You Might Not Know About Google

Google wasn't always the world's third most valuable brand. Long before it was a go-to verb, it wasan obedient digital dog, merely finding and retrieving stuff, playing fetch for Internet users over andover again.

Eventually the little G -- which started in 1995 as a Stanford University Ph.D. research project --grew into the big, $367 billion-dollar G we know and love-hate today. No longer satisfied to fetchlinks alone, the global tech colossus now chases meatier, more meaningful bones, like nailing thefastest Internet speeds on the planet, rendering human drivers obsolete and, NBD, ending death.

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The Mountain View mammoth's meteoric rise to the top is chock full of juicy trivia tidbits and mind-blowing milestones along the way.

Here are 11 surprising facts about Google:

1. Sergey Brin and Larry (Lawrence) Page met by chance.

Page, 22 at the time, having recently earned a computer engineering degree from the University ofMichigan, considers attending Stanford University for his Ph.D. Brin, then 21, already a Ph.D.candidate at the prestigious institution, is assigned to show Page around campus. That was back in1995 and, as fate would have it, quite the momentous meeting of the minds.

2. Google was originally named BackRub.

In 1996, Page and Brin collaborate on a pioneering " web crawler" concept curiously calledBackRub. Some speculate that the early search engine's nomenclature was a nod to retrievingbacklinks. BackRub, which linked to Brin's and Page's 90s-tastic original homepages, lived onStanford's servers for more than a year, but eventually chews up too much bandwidth.

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3. Google is a play on the word "googol."

On Sept. 15, 1997, over the BackRub title, Page and Brin register the domain name of theirmushrooming project as Google, a twist on "googol," a mathematical term represented by thenumeral one followed by 100 zeros. The name hints at the seemingly infinite amount of data thebrainy pair code their fledgling search engine to mine, make sense of and deliver. Many still wonderif Google is a misspelling of Googol.

4. Google's first doodle was a Burning Man stick figure.

The inaugural doodle was an out-of-the-office message that Page and Brin created in August of 1998to let people know they'd shipped off to the Burning Man festival. The future billionaires positionedthe iconic Man behind the second "o" in Google's logo. Dude, check it out here.

Related: Lessons From Burning Man on How to UnlockCreativity and Think Big

5. Google's first office was a rented garage.

So stereotypical Silicon Valley startup, right? Startingin September 1998, the company's first workspacewas Susan Wojcicki's garage on Santa Margarita Ave.in Menlo Park, Calif. Wojcicki, sister of 23andMefounder Anne Wojcicki, is Google employee no. 16. She

was Google's first marketing manager and is now the CEO of YouTube. As for the house that builtGoogle, the tech titan bought it, because of course it did. Then it filled the suburban ranch-styledwelling with candy, snacks and lava lamps.

6. A former caterer for The Grateful Dead was Google's first chef.

In 1999, chef Charlie Ayers won a cook-off judged by Google's employees, then only 40 in all, toclinch the position, which he held for seven years. Ayers initially cooked for the Grateful Dead inexchange for free admission to their legendary shows, but later took over catering for the jam band.At Google, he eventually served 4,000 daily lunches and dinners in 10 cafés throughout its MountainView, Calif. global headquarters.

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7. Google New York began at a Starbucks on 86th Street.

In 2000, Google unofficially kicked off its New York arm at a Starbucks in New York City. It washelmed by a one-person sales "team." Now, thousands of "NYooglers" clock-in at its swanky, 2.9million-square-foot New York office, a former Port Authority building on 111 Eighth Avenue.

8. Swedish Chef is a language preference in Google search.

Gurndy morn-dee burn-dee, who knew? Yes, it's true. In 2001, Google got in touch with its inneryodelling Muppet and opened the gates for search queries and results in Swedish Chef lingo (calledBork Bork Bork, to be technical). Other "joke" languages you can tickle Google's algorithm withinclude: Elmer Fudd, Pirate, Klingon, Pig Latin and, of course, Hacker (a.k.a. 1337sp34k).

Related: Get Ready for 'Buy' Buttons in Google Search Results

9. Gmail was launched on April Fool's Day, no joke.

Toying with Silicon Valley's longstanding tradition of pulling April Fool's Day pranks, Googleunveiled Gmail on April 1, 2004, in a wackily-worded announcement that was widely misconstruedas a hoax. It wasn't Google Gulp. It was a brilliant double fake and the precursor to a Google staplethat now serves millions of users across the world every day.

10. Googlers ride colorful "gBikes" around the Googleplex.

Launched in 2007, Google's Googleplex campus commuter bike program began as a modest fleet ofbright blue Huffys. Then came the goofy "clown bikes." Now Googlers ride more than 1,000 primary-colored, basket-equipped beach cruisers, dubbed "gBikes," around the two-mile expanse that isGoogle Mountain View. Interestingly, none of the bikes have locks. Employees simply "borrow" thenearest set of wheels. When they're done, they drop them off conveniently close to office entrywaysfor other Googlers to use.

11. Google negotiated its acquisition of YouTube's at Denny's over mozzarella sticks.

"We didn't want to meet at offices," YouTube co-founder Steven Chen said, "so we were like,'Where's a place that none of us would go?'" That place turned out to be a Denny's in Palo Alto, Calif.Mozzarella sticks were nibbled, hands were shaken. The 2006 landmark acquisition was a GrandSlam for Chen and co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. Not bad for the time. Google doledout $1.65 billion for what would explode into the Internet's most-watched -- and most uploaded-to --video platform.

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