11 curiosities you didn’t know about Google

The largest search engine in the world has little secrets that only the Product Manager does Marissa Mayer could reveal 🙂
I still remember when it wasn’t there Google and most people relied on another popular search engine (Altavista).
Could the key to its success be found in these 11 points?

1. Google’s interface is like that minimal because the founders of Google, Sergey and Larry were not very familiar with HTML; they created that interface because they wanted a fast text input system and that’s it.
2. Due to the simplicity of the homepage, in the first tests conducted, people sat in front of the computer screen, motionless. After a minute of waiting, the testers asked “What’s going on?” adding “We are waiting for the rest of the page”. To solve this problem the Google Copyright message as an end-of-page marker.
3. One of the major innovations introduced in the use of search was the introduction of the spelling checker giving life to the classic message “Maybe you were looking for …”. This suddenly doubled their traffic.
4. The option “I feel lucky” has always been little used, however in the tests it was found that its eventual removal would not have been appreciated by common users! It was and has become an important key.
5. Google changes little and often. When they sometimes want to test a particular new feature they perform these tests on some users of a particular service. Excite @ Home users are the most frequent “guinea pigs”.
6. Google has the network of translators largest in the world.
7. They use the 20% rule, that is, if at least 20% of people use a service, then it will be included.
8. It was found, during testing, that a small number of people are very representative of a larger majority of these. They continually test and monitor in their labs how people use page results.
9. Google was a spelling mistake when signing up, the kids actually wanted it to be “Googol”.
10. GMail has been tested for two years internally before being opened to the world (in the form of invitations). Google identified 6 typical email users and tried to please all 6 of them.
11. They actively and continuously listen to user feedback. Writing to Google is not talking to a wall.

[via Levysoft]