Alan Williamson attend a talk conducted by Marissa Mayer, a Product Manager for Google and he’s able to gather some of these interesting facts for us.
16 Interesting facts about Google
- The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
- Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
- One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
- The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
- Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.
- Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
- Google has the largest network of translators in the world
- They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.
- They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
- The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
- Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
- They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.
- Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
- This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
- Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
- Quote: Integrate Sensibly
I personally like #10, What about you?
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Posted by hongkiat in Google , at 03.20.07
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Comments
cely March 20th, 2007
these are really interesting …
ReplyAkhil Sasidharan July 24th, 2007
I like #1. It’s ironic.
Replymichael July 16th, 2008
There are just TOO MANY ADS HERE…
SPAM BLOG :|
ReplyGeorge July 16th, 2008
From an blog post by Marissa Mayer:
Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That’s the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there’s no promotional line running beneath the search box, you’ve set Google as your homepage and thus don’t get the “Make Google Your Homepage!” link, and you count “©2008 Google” as two words.)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-comes-next-in-this-series-13-33-53.html
ReplyAlex H. July 16th, 2008
I heard a different version of #10. I read somewhere that the name was originally was supposed to be Googol but the check they received to start up the search engine was made out to Google, so they changed their name.
Replymmorpg July 16th, 2008
Interesting stuff. One think I would like to know is why Gmail has been in Beta for ever now…
Replywanttoberich.wordpress.com July 16th, 2008
:D … interesting stuff
Replyg July 16th, 2008
# 13 is what corporate America need s to learn…
ReplyTiago July 16th, 2008
#12 isn’t really accurate…
ReplyAndrew July 16th, 2008
I’ve always hated the big companies and the whole corporate America thing. Google, however has always been in my highest regards for companies. They still have the feel of guys I could hang out with while bringing me awesome tools on a regular basis. I can only imagine what the next 10 years will bring!
ReplyBrent Trahan July 17th, 2008
The name Google came from the first investor who made the check out to Google instead of Googol. The company “Google” didn’t even exist yet. The founders had to scramble and create a company called Google to cash the first check. I think it was for $100,000.
ReplyAdam Whiles July 17th, 2008
That’s kind of funny about the homepage being bare. Honestly though, nothing else would work for Google. If Google had a cluttered page like MSN or Yahoo it probably wouldn’t have caught on like it did. Imagine life without Google, scary thought.
Replybill July 17th, 2008
I suspect you meant ‘free rein’, not ‘free reign’.
ReplyMatt July 17th, 2008
“I suspect you meant ‘free rein’, not ‘free reign’.”
ReplyI suspect you lack friends.
Geoserv July 17th, 2008
STUMBLED!
Very cool post.
ReplyMartin July 17th, 2008
Where is the sources for this? Hhahahah! Its just fake!
ReplyPhil E. Drifter September 9th, 2009
#10 is not what I heard, I read that they initially wanted ‘googol’ but then settled on ‘google’ because it was more pleasing to the eye or something. Gimme a break, these geniusesinvented google.com and didn’t know how to spell googol properly and had no dictionary? You read it on the internet so it must have been true, huh?
ReplyPhil E. Drifter September 9th, 2009
I also find it hard to believe that test subjects sat there waiting for a page that had already loaded to load. That’s why browsers have icons showing if they’re still downloading data.
Not everyone is as dumb as you wish they were.
Replyov3rcl0ck September 11th, 2009
Another interesting fact, in the range of a week Google will process more information than all of man kinds written work through out all of history.
ReplyChris September 15th, 2009
#12 is stretching the truth to say the least.
Their ‘listening’ in respect of AdWords complaints is virtually non-existent and they have got into a very nasty habit of replying with copied and pasted pre-scripted answers.
They don’t read complaints properly, instead choosing to scan and reply with their stock answers that are made meaningless if only they chose to read e-mails in full.
I for one am not impressed by the level of their ‘listening’.
Replynick September 17th, 2009
easily a spam blog, so many ads!
ReplyBusiness Traffic September 22nd, 2009
Personally I like point number 2 the best. I remember the first time I saw the Google search page… I thought the same thing – “where is the rest of it?” Fascinating stuff!
ReplyBrad September 23rd, 2009
They didn’t know HTML?? They should have googled it!
ReplySenxor das moscas September 23rd, 2009
I like #4 very much!!!!!
Replyroyal December 12th, 2009
this is very nice to read so many interesting facts about google,
thanks for sharing this blog….
regards.
Reply:)
mycollection January 19th, 2010
all the points are very interesting :)
ReplyJohnny February 9th, 2010
Very very interesting! Thanks for such a great historical facts!
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