Search engine Google has reached the age of 21, having first been incorporated in September 1998.

In that time Google has grown so large it has even become a verb in its own right, with a ‘Google’ for something meaning any kind of online search.

To celebrate the anniversary, here are 10 facts about the search giant you may not know.

  1. Google’s ubiquity is not lost on nearest rival Bing, as the most-searched-for word on Microsoft’s own search engine is, indeed, ‘Google’.
  2. The verb Google isn’t just a colloquial term – it entered the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2006.
  3. Although Google now uses nearly 1 million servers, back during the early days when there was only one it was stored in a custom housing made out of Lego.
  4. Whilst many searches are commonplace 15% of the queries made in any given day have never been searched for before.
  5. The company’s HQ in Silicon Valley is equipped with plenty of greenery to benefit the health and wellbeing of its employees. Rather than use mechanical means to cut the grass, however, Google uses goats.
  6. The famous Google Doodles began as little more than a version of the humble out of office. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin used an illustration of the Burning Man to show they were away from their desks (attending the festival, of course).
  7. Jennifer Lopez is partly responsible for the Google Image functionality. She wore a dress to the 2000 Grammy Awards that was such a hit it became the site’s most searched-for term. However, there was no way to actually see the dress, so Google Images followed shortly afterwards.
  8. Google discovered the hard way to not launch new products on April Fool’s Day, as when Gmail was introduced on 1 April 2004, many thought it was a prank.
  9. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for the princely sum of $1.5 billion (£1.22bn).
  10. Google is very much looking to the future for its next line of products, with interests in artificial intelligence, driverless cars and a new way to play computer games.