Tech giant Google turned 27 today and marked the occasion with a special Doodle showing its very first logo from 1998. The colourful throwback reminded millions of users how the journey of the world’s most popular search engine began in a small garage in California.
From Stanford to Silicon Valley
Google was founded by two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in 1998. What started as a research project named BackRub soon became Google – inspired by the mathematical word “googol”, meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros. Their idea was simple: to organise the world’s information and make it useful for everyone.
The company was officially incorporated on September 4, 1998, but over the years it shifted its birthday celebration to September 27, which is now widely accepted as Google’s anniversary.
The birthday date story – why September 27?
Interestingly, Google’s birthday has not always been celebrated on the same day. For the first few years, the company marked September 4 as its foundation day. Later, the celebration shifted to different dates in late September, often linked with milestones like search index expansions or product launches. Over time, September 27 became the regular date, thanks to annual Google Doodles and public mentions, making it the familiar “birthday” known to users today.
Small start, big leap
Google’s first office was a rented garage belonging to Susan Wojcicki, who later became YouTube’s CEO. From indexing a few million web pages in the late 1990s, Google quickly outperformed older search engines with faster and more accurate results.
In the following years, it launched services like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Android, Chrome and Google Drive, making itself part of daily life across the globe. In 2015, Google became part of a bigger parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Interesting facts about Google
- The first prototype search engine was called BackRub.
- The domain google.com was registered in 1997.
- The word “Google” was a spelling variation of “googol”.
- The company IPO in 2004 turned it into one of the world’s biggest tech firms.
- Google’s garage landlord Susan Wojcicki went on to lead YouTube.
More than just a search engine
Today, Google is not just a search tool but also a leader in smartphones, cloud services, digital ads and Artificial Intelligence. From a student idea to a global technology giant, the company’s journey reflects how quickly the internet has changed our world.
This birthday Doodle is a gentle reminder of how it all began – a simple vision of two young students to make the web easier to use.
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