Welcome to top five, I'm your host Iyaz Akhatar.
Let's talk a little bit about Google.
The company is famous for it's April's Fools gags, but Google has made some very real business moves that were really hard to believe.
Today we are counting down the top five unbelievable Google moves.
At number five, driverless cars.
Let me get this strait, Google, a search engine company and advertising wizard built a driverless car.
Sure it did.
No, really it did.
Back in October 2010, Google told the world that it had developed technology for cars that can drive themselves.
Why?
Google said our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time, and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing care use.
It still sounds futuristic and it still sounds nuts.
[SOUND] Number four, Google buys YouTube.
In October 2006, Google announced its purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.
Back then, YouTube was mired in copyright infringement lawsuits.
Why on earth would Google buy a company with such a liability?
On the same day of the acquisition, YouTube cleaned up a couple of spats with Universal, Sony BMG, and CBS.
Disclaimer, CNet is owned by CBS.
YouTube at the time was about two years old.
This was a huge gamble for Google, and it seemed to work out just fine.
At number three, Google announces internet by balloon.
That sounds made up too, right?
It does sound fake Google announced Project Loon in June 2013.
Loon was a product of Google X, Google's experimental lab.
The company said it believes it could be possible to build a ring of balloons flying around the globe on the stratospheric wind that provides Internet access to the Earth below.
The pilot program started in New Zealand with 50 test.
[SOUND] Number 2, Restructuring.
Google becomes a subsidiary of another company.
That sounded crazy enough that I had to check the date twice.
After realizing it was August and not April and reading the press release a couple of times, I finally believed it.
Google's co-founders moved to a newly formed company called Alphabet, which in turn owns Google.
Google stock turns into Alphabet stock.
Many of the crazy things that didn't necessarily make sense for Google to be running became their own entities outside of Google but owned by the same parent company.
You got all that?
Google Chrome head who use to be the head of Android is now the head of all of Google.
True story.
It's time to check twitter.
I asked you fine viewers what moves you thought were unbelievable.
Mary Jo pitched in with this idea, Google+ being a competitor to Facebook.
Eloy mentioned Google's contact lens that measures glucose levels.
Yes that's a real thing.
David mentioned the killing of Google Reader.
However, a lot of you picked the center announcement.
It's the number one unbelievable Google move.
By the way, Google didn't make this easy to believe when it announced the service in a blog post.
Quote, the idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer.
Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.
[MUSIC]
Should this list be the top result for crazy lists on Google Search?
Let me know, I'm Matt Iyaz.
If you wanna find me on Google+ you can find me there too.
I'm +iyazikhtar.
For more top fives like this, visit top5.cnet.com.
Thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.
[MUSIC]
