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Understanding Google – Part 1

Faisal Mar 20, 2014

Team Social media Technology

Hello friends! When it comes to Google, there are varying opinions and several misconceptions about it. Owing to time constraint, many of you may not have been able to read and learn enough about this so called ‘Giant’ called Google in deep.

Many of you may want to know more about Google or you may have even tried to learn about it. However there may still be some unanswered questions in your mind. This blog necessarily deals with many such questions and with this; I hope to quench your thirst for knowing, understanding Google in a much better way.

Here are a few common perceptions, assumptions or questions as regards Google that I came across during my course of interaction with my colleagues from different functions.

The most common of them were,

  1. Google is behemoth, ‘I don’t know about it, but I know how to use it’
  2. Google knows everything
  3. Google ranks only those websites higher which garner maximum clicks
  4. Google is not secure

Today, I’ll cover the first point as it is not possible to discuss on all in one blog. Don’t worry though; very soon I shall elaborate on each of the remaining points independently.

Google is behemoth ‘I don’t know about it but I know how to use it’

Interesting isn’t it? This usual quote is framed in such a way that it suggests we do know how to use Google but we don’t really know how it really works.

Firstly stop looking at Google as if it is a monster, simply because it is not so.

Secondly after reading the following information about Google below it will be clear to all, that this is in fact a well-designed and a very well developed search engine (software) made by people like you and me.

Now to begin with, Google initially was not Google that we know today; it was a part of the research project by PhD students Larry Page (Founder) and Sergey Brin (Founder) at the Stanford University, California.

Do you also know ‘that the word ‘Google’ was introduced accidentally? The original word ‘Googol’ which means number 1 followed by 100 zeroes, was misspelled as Google by Larry Page and one of his officemates while brainstorming. But since they like the misspelled name, ’Google’ came into existence.

Now in order to understand Google from the perspective of was exactly is the behind the scenes technology that makes Google what it is, we need to take a look at three important functions performed by three main programs as follows,

  • Crawler:

Basically the word crawling means fetching; it is to fetch each and every page present on the web. This crawler fetches data from the web page that includes text, links, images etc.

  • Indexer:

Indexer is just like an index of your book. Crawler fetches the data, indexer indexes the data. It is as simple as that.

  • Searcher:

It is the interface which you see while searching something on Google (www.google.com). Searcher gives you the best possible result of your query based on the best algorithm which has been modified from the day Google came into existence and it will never stop changing.

What is Google?

So do you now feel that you have started knowing Google!!! Isn’t it a truly amazing feeling that you now know something which you were trying to learn for so many days. Yes, I wanted to make it simple and that is the reason why I haven’t added too many things in between. If anyone is interested in knowing more details, then click on this link or wait until my blog on detailed ‘Google Anatomy in a simple way’ gets published.

Stay tuned for more blogs and I would be very happy to know your feedback and suggestions. In case of more queries about Google, please add them in the comments and I will try to answer them in my upcoming blogs.

e-Zest is a leading digital innovation partner for enterprises and technology companies that utilizes emerging technologies for creating engaging customers experiences. Being a customer-focused and technology-driven company, it always helps clients in crafting holistic business value for their software development efforts. It offers software development and consulting services for cloud computing, enterprise mobility, big data and analytics, user experience and digital commerce.