Google uses the number 26 as its hidden character

Today Alphabet Holding, which is best known for its subsidiary Google, has announced its financial results for the 3rd quarter of this year. As it turned out, the holding company is doing well. Revenues amounted to $ 18.7 billion, which is 13% more than last year.

Holding shares rose 11% after the announcement of financial results. Their growth was also influenced by the fact that Alphabet announced that it intends to buy back its shares from the market, and the amount to be spent on it turned out to be quite unusual - $ 5,099,019,513.59 . Tim Bradshaw, a technical journalist and financial Times columnist, for example, wondered what that meant:

Google's buyback is a weirdly precise number: $ 5099019513.59. Some sort of puzzle ... Something to do with Alphabet? 26 letters? anyone ...?

- Tim Bradshaw (@tim) October 22, 2015

As usual on the Internet, I did not have to guess for a long time, however, the riddle itself was not very difficult. Forbes authors George Anders quickly found out that 5099019513.59 is the square root of 26 times 1 billion. This number - 26 - is known to be equal to the number of letters in the English alphabet, which gives a direct parallel with the name of the Alphabet holding. Interestingly, the holding recently became the owner of the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, which also contains 26 letters of the alphabet.

@lexnfx It's the square root of 26 e18th. Those google guys! They have so much fun with numbers.

- George Anders (@GeorgeAnders) October 22, 2015

More recently, Google has shown an original sense of humor in an even more sophisticated way . October 21, the day Marty McFly arrived in the future, an official tweet appeared on Google’s official twitter, which, judging by the text, contained a link to Gmail themes. However, when clicking on the link, a certain pdf-file with a description of the mysterious Flux project was downloaded and with a warning not to distribute the text of the file outside of Google. Thus, it seemed that the file was published "by mistake":

Special delivery: 15 new Gmail themes to make your inbox more awesome → https://t.co/wdv0WCsAUB

- Google (@google) October 21, 2015

When studying the Flux project, it turned out that it uses “proprietary chronocompression technology to instantly move the user to the selected time and place.” Simply put, Google developed a “time machine”, and judging by the drawings, it really looks like a car. Moreover, the company already has 7 prototypes with which test tests should be performed over the next year.