Google search engine celebrates 20 years in existence

The country director, Google Nigeria, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, said the social and economic tool known as Google Search had reached 20 years in existence.

Ms. Ehimuan-Chiazor, in a statement in Lagos, said that apart from Google Search, which was a way to find information, had helped people a lot to find a job, start a business and even save money.

“This month marks a major milestone for the world’s most popular search engine, as Google Search turns 20.

“Founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with the aim of organising the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful, the Search Index now contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is well over 100 000 000 gigabytes in size.

“It is by some distance, the world’s number one search engine. This is in no small part, thanks to its efforts to ensure that users can instantly access information that is contextually relevant to them and their surroundings.

“People use it for everything ‒ from looking at the weather to plan their outfit the next day, to searching for life-saving procedures in the middle of a medical emergency.

“This is especially true in Africa, where it has proven invaluable in helping people find jobs, start businesses, and even save money,” she said.

Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor also added that even though the technology has changed, people’s tastes have remained largely the same over the past decade, given the number of people that are the most searched for on Google in Nigeria since 2008, many of them still being relevant.

She listed some of them: Linda Ikeji, Wizkid, Olamide, Muhammadu Buhari, Davido, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Phyno.

She said that in Nigeria, Google is constantly working to provide people with the best possible search experience, listing the latest efforts to include Google Go, job search, recipe search and health symptom search.

She also listed a few facts about the research in 2017, Google has launched more than 270,000 experiments and made more than 2,400 improvements to its algorithms, and has continued to launch new features to make the search more useful for everyone.