As we mark the 25th anniversary of Google, a company that has revolutionised the digital world and our everyday lives, it's a perfect time to take a stroll down memory lane and unearth some fascinating highlights and achievements of the Internet giant. Here are ten amazing facts that you may not have known about Google over the last quarter-century.

1. Humble Beginnings

Founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google started as a research project in Stanford University. The original Google site was so minimalist because Page and Brin didn't know HTML and just wanted a user interface.

2. Meaning Behind the Name

The name Google derives from 'googol,' a mathematical term for the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. This name reflects the company's mission to organise the extensive amount of information available on the web.

3. Google’s First Doodle

Google's tradition of featuring doodles on their homepage started in 1998 as an out-of-office message. The first Google Doodle was a Burning Man stick-figure that Page and Brin used to let their early users know they were at the Burning Man Festival and wouldn't be able to fix technical issues.

4. Employees Pets as Mascots

In the early days of Google, employees' dogs were unofficially Google's mascots. The company's love for canines is visible even now in their "Dog Policy." This dog-friendly culture complements one of their founding philosophies - 'to create a casual, creative, and productive work environment'.

5. Google Owns Common Misspellings

Google owns common misspellings of its domain name like www.gooogle.com and www.gogle.com, so often, when a user accidentally misspells Google, they still end up on the right website.

6. Google's most searched person in 2023

The most searched person (at time of writing) in the last month is Taylor Swift with 9,151,000 searches in the last 30 days.7. Earnings of AdWords

Google's AdWords platform generates almost all of its revenue. In 2001, AdWords was launched with 350 customers and now services millions of businesses with its advertising programme.

8. Longest Google Search Results Page

As per the company's claims, the longest Google search results page was a search for "Binary." The result calculated to a total length of more than half a mile.

9. Acquisition of YouTube

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in November 2006, which was seen as a risky move at that time. Today, YouTube is the second-largest search engine, only behind Google Search itself and Google's top search term.

10. Most asked question on Google

It might be quite surprising to know that the most asked question in the world is “what is my ip”. There are a little over 3 million people who ask this question every month