Google turns 25: 10 ways web searches have evolved

“Let me Google it” became a phrase synonymous with let me search for practically anything online. Brin and Page, now both 50 years old, became billionaires many times over. In the quarter

century that Google has been around, the search engine has amassed a more than 90 percent market share, light-years ahead of runners-up Microsoft Bing and Yahoo!, according to digital

analytics firm Similarweb. The federal Justice Department is suing the company, now under parent Alphabet Inc., accusing it of abusing its monopolistic position in online search, and this

year Google agreed to pay $23 million as part of a settlement of several class-action privacy lawsuits. Early Google home pages listed the number of web pages the search engine indexed.

Google removed the counter from the home page in 2005. Google “Larry and Sergey first wrote down our mission 25 years ago: to organize the world’s information and make it universally

accessible and useful,” Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, recently blogged. “They had an ambitious vision for a new kind of search engine to help people make sense of the waves of

information moving online. The product they built, Google Search, went on to help billions of people around the world get answers to their questions.” Those questions have evolved over time,

and in lieu of typing your query into a text box or hitting the “I’m feeling lucky” button, so have the ways you may ask those questions. You might snap an image, use your voice or pull a

phone out of your pocket. RESULTS GIVE YOU MORE THAN LISTS OF LINKS Even after 25 years, you still may not be aware of a bunch of useful Google search features. Among them: 1. BUSY TIME

TALLIES. Baseball legend Yogi Berra supposedly famously quipped, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Through Google, you can tell if a restaurant or museum you want to visit is

overcrowded. Google displays graphs with POPULAR TIMES, lists wait times and tells how long people typically spend at a place. 2. CRISIS RESPONDER. Google’s Person Finder tool, launched in

response to a disaster, can help you find someone in an area that’s had an earthquake, flood or other weather emergency. It allows you to post information you may have about a missing

person. You also can see SOS alerts when you search an area in crisis with Google Maps and news stories related to an incident. 3. EAR WORM ELIMINATOR. If a tune is stuck in your head but

you can’t remember the name nor which artist performed it, Google may be able to identify the song when you hum it. Just remember to click the MICROPHONE ICON in the search bar of the Google

app on your phone, then the SEARCH A SONG button below the four dancing dots. Of course, you can also play a recording of a song to get it recognized, similar to the Apple-owned Shazam

tool. 4. EMERGENCY HOTLINE. If your kid has accidentally swallowed something poisonous or a loved one is thinking of harming themselves, enter “poison control” or “suicide” as search terms.

Google surfaces hotline phone numbers at the top of search results. 5. FOREIGN PHRASE TRANSLATOR. The days of carrying a foreign-language dictionary in your pocket are _passé_. You can ask

Google to translate foreign words and phrases so you know how to ask strangers for directions to a landmark or, when nature calls, to a public restroom. Google can translate more than 100

languages. And if you don’t know what _antidisestablishmentarianism_ or other words mean, you won’t have to carry a pocket English dictionary either.