The world of Google

NALAKA GUNAWARDENE and VINDANA ARIYAWANSA

Fifteen years ago, nobody had heard of Google. Yet today it is both a well known noun, as well as a newly coined verb in the English language ('googling' has become synonymous with searching for information on the web). The Google Corporation has had a phenomenal rise from its humble origins in the late 1990s to be the largest media company in the world in just over a dozen years. Having started and excelled as an efficient search engine, Google today has evolved and expanded to provide a range of Internet-based services and products, most of which are offered free online. It generates its profits primarily from web-based advertising. We imagine some of you regularly google for answers to our questions: it's usually reliable, but not everything we ask about is found online. So there are some things that are (currently) beyond the reach of Google! We start off with a few questions on Google, and move on to the other interesting topics

1. Google began very small in January 1996 as a research project by its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they were both PhD students at which American university?

2. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had originally nicknamed their new search engine as 'BackRub', because their system checked the backlinks of a website or page to estimate the importance of a site.

Eventually, they changed the name to Google, which originated from a misspelling of the word 'googol', which was chosen to signify that the search engine intended to provide very large quantities of information for people. A googol is actually a very large number. What is its value?

3. Two American computer scientists are considered to be 'fathers of the global Internet' for having co-invented the Internet protocol (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in 1973, the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet. One of them is Robert Elliot Kahn. Who is the other, who has been serving since 2005 as the Chief Internet Evangelist (and a vice president) at Google?

4. He was born in South Africa but emigrated to Australia where he became one of the most famous Australian authors of fiction. His novels are primarily set in Australia or South Africa. In 1991, when his son Damon (who was born with the blood condition haemophilia) died at age 24 from AIDS-related complications, he wrote a non-fiction best-seller named April Fool's Day. Who is this author?

5. In the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore attached speakers to the helicopters during an attack on a Vietnamese village because it scares the slopes. What classical music composition was used to strike fear into the hearts of Vietnamese villagers in Apocalypse Now?

6. In 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the second woman to chair the Group of Eight (G8, and formerly the G6 or Group of Six) which is a forum, created in 1975 for the governments of the world's major economies. Who in 1984 had the honour of being the first woman to chair the group?

7. The raspy-voiced American actor who won four Emmy Awards as the deceptively rumpled homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo, a character he played on network television for more than 30 years, died on June 23 aged 83. Columbo could elicit an inadvertent confession from a suspect by prefacing his question with a seemingly harmless, "Just one more thing" - the phrase that became synonymous with his character and the title of the actor's 2006 memoir. Who was this actor?

8. The TV detective Columbo was described by the actor who played him for 30 years as: "He's unique - if he were up for auction, he would be described as 'one of a kind, a human with the brain of Sherlock Holmes who dresses like the homeless.'" Its creators Richard Levinson and William Link modelled the character after the crazy-like-a-fox sleuth in which French classic?

9. This boxer once proclaimed that he was the 'baddest man on the planet'. He was the undisputed heavyweight champion, and the first heavyweight boxer to hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles simultaneously.

He still holds the world record for having been the youngest heavyweight champion (at 20 years and 4 months). Having had a controversial career and now retired, he was inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame on 12 June 2011. Who is he?

10. This Mexican telecom tycoon became the first non-American to top the Forbes magazine's list of billionaires since 1994. He is currently the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of around US$53.5 billion through his holdings. He says he has never used a computer, and wears a plastic wristwatch. Who is he?

11. The medical term for a certain eye defect was named after this chemist and physicist who also proposed a law of partial pressures that now bears his name. What is the medical term given to this defect?

12. Two German academics, linguists and cultural researchers who lived more than 200 years ago were responsible for collecting old folk tales and publishing them in several collections of folk and fairy tales. They thus popularised well known stories such as 'Snow White', 'Cinderella', 'Rumpelstiltskin', 'Sleeping Beauty' and 'Red Riding Hood'. Who were they?

13. He was a Scottish economist and lived from 1723 to 1790. Educated at Glasgow and Oxford, he became a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1752. He was the author of the economic classic An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, which is believed to have laid the foundation for modern capitalism. Who was he?

14. This legendary fast bowler, who passed away last year, was the last man alive to have taken the wicket of Australian legendary batsman Donald Bradman - a feat he managed six times, more than any other cricketer. He twice dismissed Bradman for a duck. Who was this legendary bowler?

15. The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards are presented annually by the International Indian Film Academy to honour both artistic and technical excellence of professionals in the Hindi language film industry, better known as Bollywood. Instituted in 2000, the awards ceremony is held outside India in different countries around the world every year. Colombo hosted the IIFA awards in June 2010. Which North American city, which has a strong South Asian population, hosted IIFA 2011 from 23-25 June 2011?

Answers will be published next week

Last week's answers

1. Michelle Yeoh
2. Shabana Azmi
3. Li Bingbing
4. Paul Hermann
5. Michael Collins
6. Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT)
7. Angela Dorothea Merkel
8. Denmark
9. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
10. The Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus)
11. K Bikram Singh
12. Mexico
13. Checkpoint Charlie (or Checkpoint C)
14. Li Na
15. Britain