Our trip to Google (Ladina Brunner)

Ladina Brunner
Ms. Klasen
English 10
07/05/14

Our Trip To Google

On monday, our class went on a field trip to the google headquarters for Switzerland in Zurich. After a train ride to Enge we arrived at the main building where we were given name tags and introduced to our tour guide. Following our arrival we sat in a conference room to await an hour-long presentation from our guide. We were informed about many things about google; such as the branches that Google owns, as well as how our information was stored in data centers all over the world. Following the presentation we were given time to ask our questions and become even better informed about the company. Afterwards the class was split into 3 groups, each with a respective tour guide and we were shown around each floor of the headquarters, including the restaurants and leisure rooms. Lastly, we were escorted out of the building and back to the train station.

I learned many things from our trip that I would never have thought about before our presentation. I learned about how Google was formed and I was surprised to learn how small of a project it started off as. I found it amazing how much money Google earns every second, which was $2000 every second in the first 3 months of 2014; and even more amazed at the fact that Google lost .5 million dollars after being down for 4 minutes. A surprising piece of information that I learned was that Google is actually one of the largest manufacturers of computers in the world, but doesn't sell them. They actually use them to store everyones information in data centers spread throughout the world. Consequently; we also learned about the cooling systems and interiors of the data centers. All of my biggest questions were answered, except for design positions that were available at the company, which I didn't ask because it was a more personal question. I think Google has changed the internet completely; it has made information accessible to everyone all over the world and given people countless opportunities because of its many branches; such as adwords and the recently acquired Youtube.

"Google NC Data Center Gets Street View Treatment." SlashGear. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.slashgear.com/google-data-center-hd-photos-hit-where-the-internet-lives-gallery-17252451/>.