Google.com

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

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

History

In 1995 Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford and in 1996 Larry and Sergey begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. In 1997 they both decided to chnage the name from BackRub to Google. Google is based on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Google in 1998

Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn’t exist yet: a company called Google Inc. Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park. “PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

Google in 1999

Google outgrow garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.

Google in 2000

• The first 15 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Chinese, Japanese, Koreanand and Danish.
• Win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).
• Forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.

Google in 2001

• Google.com is now available in 26 languages.
• Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.
• Google open first international office, in Tokyo.
  

  December 2001

In the Start of 2001

Google in 2002

• The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
• Google News launches with 4000 news sources.
• Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).

Google in 2003

• Google launch Google Grants, google in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.
• We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search).

Google in 2004

• Google search index hits a 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.
• There are more than 100 Google domains.
• Open office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers
• Google Desktop Search is introduced.
• Index of web pages reaches 8 billion.

Google in 2005

• Google Maps goes live.
• Launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of APIs.
• First Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users.

Google in 2006

• Google launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
• Release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
• Release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.
• Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

Google in 2007

• At google Searchology event, they announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
• Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.

Google in 2008

• Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1
• Google Translate adds 10 more languages.
• Google release Google Health to the public, allowing people to safely and securely collect, store, and manage their medical records and health information online.
• Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.

Google is Now (2009)

A world of internet in iGoogle