Happy 15th birthday, Google! To mark the occasion, the world's second most popular site has some nifty little tricks on their platform today. That's right — you can whittle down the hours to the weekend by getting aggro on the piñata Doodle and snatch up as much candy as possible (our current high score is 115). Side note: This is a great, "safe place" to let out that pent-up frustration; just don't break your space bar in the process.
Of course, Google has tailored a special treat for those middle school computer nerds who grew up in the late '90s. Type "Google in 1998" into the search bar, and poof! You're whisked back into Web 1.0 and Google's homegrown past. Back then, the company was rocking an MS Paint-style font (with the exclamatory "Google!" — a true relic of its "excitable" era), a Linux and Stanford search, and a mere 234,000 search results (as opposed to today's whopping 9,450,000,000 — more than the world's population). You can only really check out the first page of archived results, but still, it's a fun browse. (Plus, it made us think about Netscape Navigator for the first time in a decade.)
On a more practical and future-leaning note, Google announced yesterday that they have upgraded their search algorithm to "Hummingbird," which will improve the accuracy of 90% of searches, including more advanced queries. Oh, Google — you're all grown up. (Mashable)