14 Wonderful and Wacky facts about the Internet
Here are some weird and wacky facts about the Internet
- The word GIF (the GIF image format) is supposed to be pronounced Jiff, like the peanut butter. When Steve Wilke first came up with the GIF in 1987 that’s what he wanted – and what he still wants.
- AOL (you’ve got mail) issued over 50% of all CD-ROM discs in the 1990s. That’s 100% more than the last Fountains of Wayne album.
- Google was named after the largest number, called a googol. Not the dance craze, the googaloo.
- Twitter was originally called Twttr back in 2006. But then they discovered vowels.
- This is the first and oldest site on the World Wide Web. It was invented before your parents.
- The average search time for a google search is .2 seconds. Google is actively working to shrink this by reading your mind.
- The most expensive Google AdWord is insurance. The second is loans. The most popular search phrase is call your mother already.
- The word WiFI doesn’t mean anything and was invented by a consulting firm. This time I am serious.
- China has treatment camps for Internet Addicts. They are called prisons.
- The Internet and the World Wide Web are two different things. The Internet is a computer network and the world wide web is according to Oxford Languages “an information system on the internet which allows documents to be connected to other documents by hypertext links, enabling the user to search for information by moving from one document to another.”
- LOL used to mean “lots of love” but now it means “laughing out loud”, although when jokes are as bad as these it means “lack of laughter”.
- Prisoners in Norway have Internet in their cells. This makes it easier to look up the word insurance on Google.
- Salmon Bay Wireless is the only Internet Service Providers in the world named after Salmon Bay. (Salmon Bay is an actual Bay – not the fictional town featured in the Playstation 4 game InFamous).
- You are now reading this on the Internet (or is it the world wide web?). Do you have any weird, funny, or wacky facts about the Internet that you would like to share? Leave them in the comments.