Google (GOOG) is celebrating its 15th anniversary with an big update to its search algorithm and, of course, one of its "doodles" on Google.com.
Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times each year, but executives have been touting the new update called "Hummingbird," which the company quietly rolled out earlier this month.
"When Google switched to Hummingbird, it's as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one," wrote SearchEngineLand.com blogger Danny Sullivan. "It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch."
The new algorithm should help users who prefer "conversational search," says Sullivan. Google's mobile software, Android, and other Google products let users search by speaking to their devices — the new update reportedly will better focus results based on speech patterns.
The update comes in concert with Google's 15th anniversary as a company. Google incorporated in California on Sept. 4, 1998, and started working in a garage in Menlo Park, Calif., near Stanford University, where founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Ph.D. students. (Google hasn't responded to our question about why Sept. 27 and not Sept. 4 is the preferred birth date.)
Wall Street expects Google's 2013 revenue to rise 40% to $59.6 billion. Not bad for a company the same age as the average high school sophomore. The company's market cap is fast approaching $300 billion. On the Nasdaq, only Apple (AAPL) has a higher valuation.
Google is, of course, having some fun on its birthday. It posted a game on Google.com where users can spend time trying to smash candy out of a pinata. And if you search for "Google in 1998," you'll get a look at what search results used to look like.
To mark the birthday, the Pew Research Center on Friday released information from a poll of Internet users that it conducted in April and May. Pew found that 56% of Internet users have used a search engine to look up their own name to see what information is available about them online. Seems low to us, but that is up from 22% the first time Pew asked that question, in 2001.
That percentage, says Pew, has been pretty steady since at least 2009, when 57% of Internet users said they had searched for results connected to their name online.
Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times each year, but executives have been touting the new update called "Hummingbird," which the company quietly rolled out earlier this month.
"When Google switched to Hummingbird, it's as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one," wrote SearchEngineLand.com blogger Danny Sullivan. "It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch."
The new algorithm should help users who prefer "conversational search," says Sullivan. Google's mobile software, Android, and other Google products let users search by speaking to their devices — the new update reportedly will better focus results based on speech patterns.
The update comes in concert with Google's 15th anniversary as a company. Google incorporated in California on Sept. 4, 1998, and started working in a garage in Menlo Park, Calif., near Stanford University, where founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Ph.D. students. (Google hasn't responded to our question about why Sept. 27 and not Sept. 4 is the preferred birth date.)
Wall Street expects Google's 2013 revenue to rise 40% to $59.6 billion. Not bad for a company the same age as the average high school sophomore. The company's market cap is fast approaching $300 billion. On the Nasdaq, only Apple (AAPL) has a higher valuation.
Google is, of course, having some fun on its birthday. It posted a game on Google.com where users can spend time trying to smash candy out of a pinata. And if you search for "Google in 1998," you'll get a look at what search results used to look like.
To mark the birthday, the Pew Research Center on Friday released information from a poll of Internet users that it conducted in April and May. Pew found that 56% of Internet users have used a search engine to look up their own name to see what information is available about them online. Seems low to us, but that is up from 22% the first time Pew asked that question, in 2001.
That percentage, says Pew, has been pretty steady since at least 2009, when 57% of Internet users said they had searched for results connected to their name online.
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