elgooG is the word ''
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
''
spelled backwards and also the name of a Google
mirror site
Mirror sites or mirrors are replicas of other websites. The concept of mirroring applies to network services accessible through any protocol, such as HTTP or FTP. Such sites have different URLs than the original site, but host identical or near-i ...
.
History
The first usage of the term comes from a Google mirror site created by All Too Flat, a website dedicated to "useless information and the promotion of laughter". It accepted queries and provided
search results
A search engine results page (SERP) is a webpage that is displayed by a search engine in response to a query by a user. The main component of a SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword quer ...
that were spelled in reverse alphabetical order.
elgooG gained popularity in 2002 because it could still be accessed from
mainland China
"Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...
through the
Great Firewall even after the government
blocked search engines such as
AltaVista
AltaVista was a web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...
and Google, although the mirror site did not have support for Chinese characters.
elgooG was not officially affiliated with Google.
Its creators asked Google for permission to sell elgooG merchandise to cover bandwidth costs but were refused.
On April 8, 2015, Google created an official mirrored version of Google Search for
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day (rarely called All Fools' Day) is an annual custom on the 1st of April consisting of practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fool " at the recipient. ...
with
com.google. The site was the company's first ever use of the
.google top-level domain
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...
.
See also
*
List of Google Easter eggs
The American technology company Google has added Easter egg (media), Easter eggs into many of its List of Google products, products and services, such as Google Search, YouTube, and Android (operating system), Android since the 2000s. Google ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elgoog
Google Search
Internet search engines
Internet censorship in China