Anniversary of GOOGLE's founding (September 4): Writer's Almanac tribute

from Writer's Almanac for Sunday September 4 (Minnesota Public Radio: Garrison Keillor):

On September 4 in 1998, Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google. They met in graduate school at Stanford and worked together on a couple of group projects. They got the idea for a search engine that ranks its results by their popularity, figuring that the most useful websites would also have the most "hits." It was a revolutionary idea, and it worked: Only three months later, PC Magazine reported that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results," and named it the search engine of choice.
The behemoth nevertheless manages to maintain its sense of whimsy. Language choices include "Swedish Chef" and "Klingon." And since 2000, they have perpetrated a number of April Fools' Day hoax announcements: the search engine is powered by pigeons; they are planning to build a facility on the Moon; they are launching MentalPlex, mind-reading software to make searches more effective. Their 2006 hoax was the announcement of a new service, "Google Romance," because "dating is a search problem." One April Fools' Day announcement was no joke: the launch of Gmail in 2004.
The company is based in Mountain View, California, on a large campus they call the Googleplex, and it's often held up as an employees' paradise. Workers eat for free at any number of gourmet organic restaurants on-site. The company provides Wi-Fi-enabled shuttle buses from five Bay Area locations; for car commuters, they have an on-site oil changes and a car wash. They also have on-site barbers, massage therapists, language instructors, Laundromats, notaries, bookmobiles, and even doctors that provide free check-ups. They provide a $500 "take-out food" allowance to families with new babies. Employees may set their own hours and come to work during times of the day that they feel most productive; it's not uncommon to see a few night owls wandering the halls at three in the morning. Their Innovation Time Off policy encourages employees to spend up to 20 percent of their work time on projects that interest them. It benefits the company as well as the employee: In 2005, Vice President Melissa Mayer estimated that half of Google's new products have arisen as a result of Innovation Time Off.