Top 10 Most Visited Websites of the World: Their details and some more amazing facts!

This detailed list of top 10 most visited websites of the world mostly includes search engines and social networking sites as you can see. It shows us that the global villagers have understood the value of sharing, knowledge and connectivity... And here you may come across many interesting and not-so-popular facts on your most favourite web sites!

Stats obtained from 

Alexa Web Ratings.

(dec 23rd - 2011)

1. Google • google.com •

Google creates custom logos to celebrate significant people and events.
(here we have Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street)

♣ founded in : 1998

♣ founders : Sergey Brin, Larry Page

♣ services : Search Engine, Advertising(Ad words), Productivity Tools, Enterprise Products, Translation Service, News, Mobile phones, free wi-fi access (US), Web Browser(Chrome-open source), Email Service(Gmail), Social Networking(Google+), Photo organizing and editing (Picasa), Instant messaging (G-talk) and many more...

♣ subsidiaries : YouTube, DoubleClick, On2Technologies, Picnik, Aardvark, AdMob, Zagat, Motorola Mobility

♣ officers : Larry Page (co-founder and CEO), Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman), Sergey Brin (co-founder)

☺ Google Inc. (US) was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they were attending the Stanford University for their Phd- in 1998.It has grown in leaps and bounds since then. 

☺ The name Google was originated because of a misspelling of the word "googol", which depicts the number "digit 1 followed by 100 zeros."

☺ Google hosts the #1 search engine at present(Google) and is the proud owner of two more websites in this list! (YouTube-#3 and Blogspot-#8)

☺ The company says : "starting from two computer science students in a university dorm room, we now have thousands of employees and offices around the world."

&

"Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

2. Facebook • facebook.com •

♣ founded in : 2004
♣ founders : Mark Zukerberg, Edurado Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes
♣ services : Social Networking, Information Sharing, Chat, Advertising, Games...
♣ users : over 800 million (sept-2011)
♣ officers : Mark Zukerberg (co-founder and CEO), Chris Cox(VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg(COO), Donald E. Graham (chairman)

☺ Mark Zukerberg created thefacebook.com while he was a sophomore at the Harvard University with the help of few of his college friends; Edurado Saverin (capitalization and co-ordination), Dustin Moskovitz (progammer) and Andrew McCollum (graphic artist)

☺ "Thefacebook" was later changed to "Facebook" as per the instructions of the founding president of facebook; Sean Parker (co-founder of Plaxo, Napster, Airtime and Causes) [Sure calling it fb is much better than calling it tfb ;)]

☺ Throught out the years Mark Zukerberg has been accused by many people and institutions including the Harvard College Administration Board.

☺ First he was accused for violating copyrights and individual privacy while creating Facemash(which later influenced the concept for Facebook) and years later came the world famous case filed by the Winklevoss twins(Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss) and Divya Narendra saying that Zukerberg intentionally misled them and has used their company's concept for building HarvardConnection.com in building Facebook. Many cases followed claiming for the shares of the company but somehow they have all been settled successfully.

☺ The site has been portrayed in many movies and books all around the world. Among them the book written by Ben Mezrich, titled The accidental Billionaires : The founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (2009) was special. Edurado Saverin (co-founder fb) has been assisting Mezrich's book. 

☺ The Social Network(drama film-2010) directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook was adapted from Ben Mezrich's book. However Mark Zukerberg has stated that the film was inaccurate. But it's worth watching it. BTW "who can get to 800 million friends without making a few enemies..." (partly quoted from the movie itself) ☺

☺ Zukerberg says : "When I built the first version of Facebook, almost nobody I knew wanted a public page on the internet. That seemed scary. But as long as they could make their page private, they felt safe sharing with their friends online.Control was key. With Facebook, for the first time, people had the tools they needed to do this. That's how Facebook became the world's biggest community online.  We made it easy for people to feel comfortable sharing things about their real lives. "

3. YouTube • youtube.com •

♣ founded in : 2005
♣ founders : Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim
♣ services : Video sharing / hosting
♣ slogan : Broadcast Yourself
♣ officers : Salar Kamangar (CEO), Chad Hurley (Advisor)

☺ YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. They have all been employees of PayPal at that time.

☺ The youtube officers claim that over 48 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute.!!!

☺ YouTube has been blocked in China, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan and Libya. Several other countries like Thailand and Iran have also temporarily blocked it for certain periods of time due to various cultural and political reasons. 

☺ Now YouTube operates as a subsidiary of Google. 

☺ The company says : "Founded in February 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small."

4. Yahoo! • yahoo.com •

♣ founded in : 1995

♣ founders : Jerry Yang, David Filo

♣ services : search engine (Yahoo! search), web portal, Yahoo! mail, Yahoo! news, Yahoo! groups, Yahoo! directory, Yahoo! answers, advertising, Yahoo! maps, video sharing (Yahoo! video) & ...
♣ subsidiaries : Yahoo! has over 62 subsidiaries.

♣ officers : Roy Bostock (Chairman), Tim Morse (Interim CEO)

☺ Yahoo! was created by Jerry Yang and David Filo when they were studying as electrical engineering graduate students at the Stanford University.

☺ The term Yahoo was meant to be an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

☺ Yahoo! provides a personalized service as My Yahoo! which allows users to combine all their favorite Yahoo features and information to one page. 

☺ New York Times has reveled that Yahoo collects far more customer data than any of its competitors. It is said that they can build a profile of approximately 2500 records per month about each of its visitors. They retain search requests for a period of 13 months. But as per the instructions of the European Regulators, Yahoo scrambles the last 8 digits of the IP addresses after 3 months, leaving the visitors partially anonymous.

☺ The company says : "We are committed to winning with integrity. We know leadership is hard won and should never be taken for granted."

"We believe humor is essential to success. We applaud irreverence and don't take ourselves too seriously. We celebrate achievement. We yodel."

"We respect our customers above all else and never forget that they come to us by choice."

"We are flexible and learn from our mistakes."

"We appreciate the value of multiple perspectives and diverse expertise."

5. Baidu • baidu.com •

♣ founded in : 1999

♣ founders : Robin Li, Eric Xu

♣ services : Internet search engine, Baidu map, Baidu post bar, Baidu news, Baidu MP3, Baidu Space(social network), Baidu Encyclopedia(Chinese), Baidu Love, Baidu Games, Baidu Youa(e-commerce), Baidu Anti-virus and man more services...

♣ subsidiaries : Baidu.inc(Japan)

♣ officers : Robin Li (Chairman and CEO)

☺ Baidu (pronounced as By-doo in English) is a Chinese web services company.

☺ Baidu.com is available in Chinese and Japanese languages.

☺ The name "Baidu" was quoted from the last line of Xin Qiji's classical poem "Green Jade Table in The Lantern Festival" .  (In ancient China girls had to stay indoors and lantern festival was one of the few chances that they could meet their lovers once a year. "..hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood." Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal. ~ quoted from baidu overview)

☺ Baidu is the number 1 search engine in China and controls 63% of China's market share as of 2010. 

☺ The company says : "With our goal of best serving the needs of our users and customers with intelligent and relevant solutions, we look forward to a robust future." 
&
"We provide our users with many channels to find and share information. In addition to our core web search product, we power many popular community-based products, such as Baidu PostBar, the world’s first and largest Chinese-language query-based searchable online community platform, Baidu Knows, the world’s largest Chinese-language interactive knowledge-sharing platform, and Baidu Encyclopedia, the world’s largest user-generated Chinese-language encyclopedia, to name but a few."

6. Wikipedia • wikipedia.org •

♣ founded in : 2001

♣ founders : Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger

♣ services : Free Encyclopedia

♣ sister projects : 

♣ owner : Wikimedia foundation (non profit org)

☺ Larry Sanger has come up with the name Wikipedia by combining the Hawaiian word wiki (meaning 'quick') and the English word encyclopedia.

☺ The concept of Wikipedia was born while Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger was working on a similar project called Nupedia. (Nupedia had a system of peer review and required highly qualified contributors. Writing of articles was slow, so the Nupedia project was abandoned later.)

☺ Currently Wikipedia is available in over 270 languages. 

☺ The company says : "Anyone with Web access can edit Wikipedia, and this openness encourages inclusion of a tremendous amount of content. About 91,000 editors—from expert scholars to casual readers—regularly edit Wikipedia."

Ten Things You May Not Know about Wikipedia... →

7. Windows Live • live.com •

♣ founded in : 2005

♣ founders : Microsoft

♣ services : e-mail (Hotmail), Groups, Password protected online storage (SkyDrive), Messenger, Photo Gallery, Search Engine (Bing), Movie Maker and etc...

♣ owners : Microsoft

☺ Windows Live is the services and software platform of Microsoft.

☺ The company says : " Windows Live is a way to extend the Windows user experience. "

8. Blogger • blogger.com •

♣ founded in : 1999

♣ founders : Pyra Labs

♣ services : Blog publishing services

♣ owner : Google.Inc 

☺ Blogger was initially created by three friends who were engaged in the business of doing contract web projects for other companies.

☺ A single user can create an unlimited number of blogs using blogger.A single blog can have up to 100 blog authors allowing group blogs. 

☺ Blogger allows its users to generate revenue through their blogs by using Google Ad Sense and via Amazon Associates.

☺ Blogger is available in nearly 50 languages. 

☺ The company says : "Blogger was started by a tiny company in San Francisco called Pyra Labs in August of 1999. This was in the midst of the dot-com boom. But we weren't exactly a VC-funded, party-throwing, foosball-in-the-lobby-playing, free-beer-drinking outfit. (Unless it was other people's free beer.)"

&

"We were three friends, funded by doing annoying contract web projects for big companies, trying to make our own grand entrance onto the Internet landscape. What we were originally trying to do doesn't matter so much now. But while doing it, we created Blogger, more or less on a whim, and thought — Hmmm... that's kinda interesting."

9. Amazon • amazon.com •

                       

♣ founded in : 1994 (went online in 1995)

♣ founders : Jeff Bezos

♣ services : Online shopping 

♣ subsidiaries and products : A2Z Development, A9.com, Endless.com, Lab126, Brilliance Audio, Alexa Internet, Amazon.com, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Studios, Amazon Web Services, Audible.com, Endless.com, IMDb, LoveFilm, Zappos.com, Woot

♣ officers : Jeff Bezos (chairman, CEO and president)

☺ The name Amazon was given after the world famous Amazon river. It was selected mainly because Jeff Bezos wanted the site to be a massive exotic and a different one just like the Amazon river. He had also wanted the site to begin with an 'A' so that it would appear early in the alphabetical order.  

☺ Amazon.com is available in English, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese.

☺ The company started as an online book store and today it has become the world's largest online retailer selling books, DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food and toys... 

☺ The company says : 

" At Amazon, we're constantly looking for ways to further reduce our environmental impact. "&

"At Amazon, if we do our job right, our greatest contribution to the good of society will come from our core business activities: lowering prices, expanding selection, driving convenience, driving frustration-free packaging, creating Kindle, innovating in web services, and other initiatives we'll work hard on in the future. "

10. Twitter • twitter.com •

sources : 
☼  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
☼  http://www.alexa.com/topsites
☼  & all the ten sites mentioned above