Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising more than nearly 1.6 billion web pages, and which if printed, would result in a stack of paper 110 miles high. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second. 

 Google receives more than 150 million search queries a day, more than half of which come from outside the United States. Peak traffic hours to google.com are between 6 a.m. and noon PST, when more than 2,000 search queries are answered a second. 

Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old). 


PageRank technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. Google does not count links; instead PageRank uses the vast link structure of the web as an organizational tool. In essence, Google interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a "vote" by Page A for Page B. Google assesses a page's importance by the votes it receives. 

Google also analyzes the pages that cast the votes. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important. Important, high-quality pages receive a higher PageRank and are ordered or ranked higher in the results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. Google does not use editors or its own employees to judge a page's importance.