Founding and rise
Today, Google is known as a $2 trillion company that specializes in online advertising and search engine technology. In this slideshow, we dive into the company’s founding and rise in the 1990s.
Officially launched
Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The initial search algorithm was developed in 1996 and was known as “BackRub,” supported by Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg.
Registered as
Google’s domain was registered as google.com on September 15, 1997, after initially using Stanford’s website with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu.
CEO of YouTube
The company was formally incorporated as Google on September 4, 1998, in the garage of Susan Wojcicki in Menlo Park, California, who later became an executive at Google and the CEO of YouTube.
Search engine
The name “Google” is a misspelling of “Googol,” which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, indicating the vast amount of information provided by the search engine.
Measure the importance
Scott Hassan played a significant role in developing the original search engine but left before the company was founded. Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the PageRank algorithm to measure the importance of web pages based on backlink data.
LEGO bricks
The first Google computer was housed in custom-made enclosures made from LEGO bricks. The first version of Google was launched on the Stanford website in August 1996 and utilized a significant portion of Stanford’s bandwidth.
Simple text ads
Initially opposed to advertising pop-ups, Brin and Page wrote a research paper in 1998 against advertising-funded search engines but later allowed simple text ads.
Attempted to sell
In early 1999, Page and Brin attempted to sell Google to Excite for $1 million, but the offer was rejected. The company eventually moved to several locations before leasing the Googleplex in Mountain View in 2003.
Largest media companies
Google made its initial public offering in 2004, becoming one of the world’s largest media companies.
Product Launches
Product Launches: Key products launched include Google News (2002), Gmail (2004), Google Maps (2005), Google Chrome (2008), and Google+ (2011).
Shopping searches
In 2015, Google became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a holding company. By August 2024, Google was accused of having an illegal monopoly over internet search engines, with a specific ruling made in Europe regarding shopping searches in September 2024.