The search engine with the greatest user share, by a large margin. The company that creates/maintains it also works on a wide variety of other products, including things like translators, the webmail provider Gmail, the interactive map Google Earth, the free cloud-based web office suite Google Drive, the web browser Google Chrome (and an operating system of the same name), the Android mobile OS, the social networking hub, The Advertisement Server. Find it here.
TV Tropes' search engine is also run by Google.
Surely a company this wildly successful can afford to rest on its laurels for awhile? Nope. Fuelled by their success in commercializing software products and services, Google is now using its vast financial resources, data collection and analysis ability to explore the frontier edge of technology. Of particular note are its Augmented Reality glasses, Automated Automobiles, and the Knowledge Graph/Knowledge Vault unified framework and database system to allow its personal assistant Google Now unprecedented ability to understand you and process any kind of information on demand, with the aim to eventually develop it into a true Artificial Intelligence (for which purpose it hired many specialists in the field, including the renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil). To show that the potential of Big Data is truly endless, Google has established the California Life Company (CALICO), whose aim is advancements in personalized medicine through advanced monitoring devices, preventative medicine, coordinating medical data from researchers and medical centres across the world and ultimately the defeat of aging itself.
Currently believed to be the most likely company to result in The Singularity.
In 2015, Google was made into a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Not to be confused with a googol, which is equal to 10100.note
Websites and services:
Tropes that fit Google include:
- April Fools' Day: Google has an entire page on The Other Wiki for their annual jokes.
- Artifact Title: AdSense, the company's cash cow, was originally a feature called AdWords Select, a premium version of a paid-search function called AdWords it had launched in 2002. AdWords Select became so popular that Google dropped the original AdWords altogether shortly afterwards, but didn't rename it.
- Built with LEGO: Google built its first server racks out of LEGO bricks.
- Big Bad: The 2016 Halloween Google Doodle game has the leader of the ghosts who kidnap the students at the Wizarding School. And again in the 2020 Halloween Doodle.
- The Cameo:
- Google itself appears in Hitch and during the Time-Compression Montage in The Muppets.
- Google's campus is featured in The Internship. The creators wanted to set the comedy in a Google-like company, then wondered why not just ask Google?
- In The Circle a woman enters a Google-like tech company that is obsessed with privacy, or rather desiring the lack of it.
- Additionally, Google Earth is featured in Crank, as well as a map in later seasons of both The Amazing Race and Cash Cab.
- Google Earth practically gets an And Starring in the Based on a True Story movie Lion, where the protagonist discovers that Google Earth combined with his photographic memory could help him track down his long-lost birth family after he was accidentally separated from them at age five.
- The character Ruby in Sticky Dilly Buns starts out as The Ingenue, but she's not only bright, she's a compulsive Google user. Which explains how she adapts to life in a sex comedy so rapidly.
- Cargo Cult: The Church of Google.
- Cats Are Magic: The Magic Cat Academy series of Halloween Google Doodles are about a cat named Momo who battles a ghost and its minions at a wizarding school.
- Cat Ninja: Lucky from the Champion Island Games Google Doodle, though outside of her outfit and teleporting ability she comes off more as an athlete than a ninja.
- Chromatic Arrangement: The four teams of the 2015 Global Candy Cup are red, blue, green, and yellow.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Even Google thought bringing Internet service to rural areas via balloons was both
Crazy Enough to Work and just crazy. - Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The company is made of this trope internally, from pipes and cables in data centers to healthy and unhealthy snacks in office kitchens..
- Couch Gag: For certain holidays, anniversaries, and other events, a special version of the Google logo (known as a "Google Doodle") will be created to commemorate a given event, usually outsourced to a specific artist. An archive of the Doodle variants used to datenote can be found here.
- For Pac-Man's 30th birthday, the Google logo changed to a playable level of Pac-Man, and it remains playable here.
- For Doctor Who's 50th birthday, the logo became a short playable game in which you can play as any of the eleven Doctors (well, the eleven Doctors that existed at the time). It also remains playable.
- On the 70th birthday of John Lennon, the logo was a short music video set to an audio clip of "Imagine".
- Similarly, on Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday, the logo became an animated video clip for "Don't Stop Me Now".
- For Halloween 2018, Google launched its first multiplayer logo game, playable here.
- Upon Super Mario Bros.'s 30th anniversary, a ? block was added to certain searches. Clicking it makes a coin appear. On the official version still found on a search for "Super Mario Brothers" (no abbreviation), clicking it 100 times plays a 1-Up sound.
- For the release of Avengers: Endgame, Google added an "infinity gauntlet" to the right side of a search for "Thanos" or "Infinity Gauntlet".Source Clicking the gauntlet would dissolve random results to half of the total and then reduce the number of search results to half the total. Clicking the gauntlet again would reverse the action.
- For The Batman (2022), a search for "Bruce Wayne", "Bat Signal", or "Gotham City" added the Bat-Signal projector to the right side. Clicking it would darken the screen; an animation then plays of the Bat-Signal shining onto the dark clouds and Batman's shadow grappling across.
- For the release of The Last of Us (2023), a search for its title or similar searches about the HBO TV show would show a dark red mushroom icon. Clicking it would have cordyceps plants sprout from the bottom of the screen, and more will cover the screen with each click.
- Since Google's search bar automatically kicks you into search results now, the now useless "I'm Feeling Lucky" button redirects to a randomly selected item, chosen when you put your mouse over the button, e.g. "I'm Feeling Trendy" or "Artistic", etc.. Only happens if Instant searches are on, though. If you have it off, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button will work as usual. And when it's off, you can get some pretty funny stuff - try searching "French Military Victories" and hit "I'm feeling lucky".
- For Pac-Man's 30th birthday, the Google logo changed to a playable level of Pac-Man, and it remains playable here.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Searching "recursion" will net you a "Did you mean recursion?" link at the top. And if you click on that...
- Do a Barrel Roll: No, seriously. Try searching "do a barrel roll" or "Z or R twice" on the Google homepage. Go on - we'll still be here when you've finally pulled your jaw off the floor.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first iteration of the search technology was named BackRub, because it analyzed the web's "back links", get it? Once it started taking off they realized they needed a better name.
- Easter Egg: You'd be hardpressed to find a Google product that doesn't have at least one.
- There are various words and phrases that will produce a special result when searched them. For example, Google knows that the answer to The Ultimate Question is 42.
- One does not simply walk into Mordor.
- In Google Earth, pressing Ctrl+Alt+A or Command+Option+A lets you play Microsoft Flight Simulator over where you are. It's even fully compatible with the Sidewinder joystick.
- Every Android version since 2.3 has an Easter egg that's accessed by repetitively tapping "Android Version" in the "About Phone/Device" section of the Settings app. Commonly having something to do with the version's name.
- A video by Numberphile has its view count permanently frozen at 301 views, a Mythology Gag to how view counts at one point would stay at that number before they were legitimized.
- The Youtube version of Too Many Cooks features the video title in the font and color used for cast credits.
- Setting Google Translate to German, and typing in "pv", "zk", "bschk", or a series of Ks will result in the "Listen" button changing to "Beatbox".
- Searching for "Atari Breakout" in Google Images lets you play Break Out with the image results.
- Pressing Space or the Up arrow on Google Chrome's Offline screen activates an Endless Runner featuring the dinosaur.
- Searching for "askew" tilts the website.
- Searching for "Zerg Rush!" starts a minigame where your search results are attacked by yellow circles that you have to click to destroy.
- Searching for "Splatoon" lets you play a game where you throw globs of paint on the screen.
- As an April Fools' Day prank, Google Earth used to allow you to play Pac-Man with any given section.
- Edible Theme Naming: Versions of Android since 1.5 are named after sweets. Coincidentally, they're also all in alphabetical order.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: One of the languages that can be set via search settings. It gives you the option to switch back to English if you don't want it to be the default language.
- Everyone Owns a Mac: Despite Apple and Google's Android rivalry, Google plays this trope straight: users requiring a laptop are issued a Macbook, users requesting a desktop are either issued a Mac or a PC preloaded with Linux. Windows usage is rare in the company, and those who wish to use Windows will need to present a business case to the management first and will only get a Windows machine if the business case is approved.
- Everyone Went to School Together: Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google as computer science grad students at Stanford.
- Furries Are Easier to Draw:
- Some of their Google Doodles, such as the ones for the Beijing Olympics.
- There was also their Christmas 2006 series with kangaroos.
- Some of their Google Doodles, such as the ones for the Beijing Olympics
- A God Am I: Played for Laughs with the Church of Google. They've compiled a list of 9 proofs to assert Google's godhood.
- Hat of Flight: During orientation, new employees ("Nooglers") are given a propeller hat in Google colors. One of the many on-campus statues of the Google Android is of a "Noogledroid", a green Android wearing the Noogler hat◊.
- Immediate Sequel: The Halloween 2020 Google Doodle to the Halloween 2016 one.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Google Mail, Google Maps, Google+, etc..
- Leet Lingo: One of the languages that can be set via search settings. It gives you the option to switch back to English if you don't want it to be the default language.
- Meaningful Name: Named after the aforementioned Googol.
- Mega-Corp: One of the biggest examples over the Internet.
- Minimalistic Cover Art: The default search page.
- Muppet Cameo:
- The Sesame Street Muppets had a week of doodles in 2008 as part of the series' 40th anniversary.
- For Jim Henson's 75th birthday they had a special puppet note logo: You could make them eat each other.
- Inverted in The Muppets (2011), where Google makes a cameo as Scooter's place of employment during the Time-Compression Montage.
- Swedish Chef's "bork bork bork" is one of the languages that can be set via search settings. It gives you the option to switch back to English if you don't want it to be the default language.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Common on Google's translations, especially for Asian languages, as mentioned below.
- Non-Answer: In one commercial, a girl asks her mother how far away the moon is. The mother says, "Far!"
- Not the Intended Use: Google Translate is supposed to be for translating text into different languages, however it also translates websites once their URL is pasted into the text box. As a result, it is popular as a proxy server.
- Pig Latin: A currently
Dummied Out language option. - Retreaux:
- For April Fools' Day in 2012, Google Maps was entirely redone in the style of the NES Dragon Quest games.
- When searching for "Google In 1998", the page used to display as it did in Google's first few years. It even used Wayback Machine for the search results.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: So many people were searching for pictures of the green Versace dress that Jennifer Lopez wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards that it singlehandedly led to the creation of Google Images.
- Self-Deprecation: You can start typing "why google s" and one of the term suggestions is "Why Google sucks." If you type "google is", two of the suggestions will be "Google is evil" and "Google is making us stupid". Typing "I hate g" will instantly show you "I hate Google". And so on.
- Sdrawkcab Alias: elgooG si osla desu ni anihC ot teg dnuora eht nab.
- Shout-Out:
- The "crashed tab" page in Google Chrome looks a lot like the "Sad Mac" icon in old Apple Macintoshes.
- Overlapping with Developer's Foresight, if you input "Wenn ist das Nunstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!" in German to English in Google Translate, you get "[FATAL ERROR]".
- Searching "game of life" will result in Conway's Game of Life playing in the background.
- Significant Anagram: Search for "anagram" and it will ask if you meant "Nag a ram."
- Slogans:
- Famously, "Don't be evil".
- Or for Alphabet, Google's new parent company, "Do the right thing".
- Stealth Insult: The Google Doodle celebrating the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics has a rainbow background. This is a subtle jab against the ban of LGBT propaganda in Russia.
- Talk Like a Pirate: One of the languages that can be set via search settings. It gives you the option to switch back to English if you don't want it to be the default language.
- Thirteenth Birthday Milestone: On September 27, 2011, Google celebrated its 13th anniversary by displaying a doodle featuring cake, presents, and balloons.
- Translation Train Wreck: Google Translate tends to mistake Latin for French. Similarly, Japanese and most other Asian languages.
- Unwinnable Joke Game: Enter "Zerg Rush" on the home page and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky", and you'll get to play a game where you must defend your search results against a bunch of O's. There are too many of them, and they'll eventually defeat you. Then they'll spell out "GG".
- Water Is Air: Google Earth's flight simulator can't tell the difference between being underwater and being in the sky, as long as it isn't touching the ground.
Search: Index
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle
