“Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.”
So began the “letter from the founders” penned by Sergey Brin and
Larry Page in the company’s securities registration form in 2004.
Despite ever-increasing commercial success since that date, Brin and
Page have kept to their word.
Google is an unconventional company with a huge stake in our online
lives. It is a source of fascination for many, including us, but what
really happens in the Googleplex? And what cool factoids and stats
exist from the company’s relatively short past?
Here we bring you 10 fun facts about Google to quench our own thirst
for Google knowledge as well as hopefully offer you a distracting
diversion from your daily life.
1. The First Google Doodle

Google’s
famous homepage “Doodles” (the changing Google logo graphics) are well
known and enjoyed by millions around the world as a way to mark an
event or anniversary. But did you know that the very first Google
Doodle was designed as a kind of “out of office” message?
In 1998 Brin and Page took the weekend off to go the Burning Man
festival in Nevada. The Burning Man doodle (shown above), was designed
by the Google guys and added to the homepage to let their users know
they were out of office and couldn’t fix technical issues like a server
crash.
2. Interesting Figures from the Google IPO

While
the initial price for Google’s stock at its Initial Public Offering in
August 2004 is an interesting stat in itself, there’s more to the
story. The opening price for Google’s stock was $85 per share. At the
time of writing, the stock price was $483 but has soared as high as
$600 in the past year, making GOOG a rather nice investment for many.
A bonus factoid from Google’s IPO process is the value Google stated it
hoped to raise on its S-1 form — as much as $2,718,281,828. It may
just look like a..