Google celebrates its 25th birthday today, marking a significant milestone in its journey from a dorm room prototype to a global tech giant. Here are some captivating facts about Google’s remarkable history:
1. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders, first met at Stanford University in 1997, where their collaboration began.
2. Google’s journey started in a dorm room as they developed their first search engine prototype.
3. In August 1998, they received a $100,000 investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, officially founding Google Inc., which initially operated out of a Menlo Park garage.
4. Google’s headquarters, known as the ‘Googleplex,’ is now located in Mountain View, California.
5. The company’s mission remains the same: making the world’s information accessible to everyone.
6. Google’s Search index has expanded to include hundreds of billions of online pages, exceeding 100,000,000 gigabytes in size.
7. The initial meeting between Brin and Page was marked by disagreement on various subjects.
8. Google’s original focus was on analyzing backlinks to assess web page importance, leading to its former name, ‘Backrub.’
9. The name ‘Google’ is a play on the mathematical expression representing 1 followed by 100 zeros.
10. Google.com was registered in 1997 but didn’t launch until September 1998.
11. The first office was in a garage owned by employee #16, Susan Wojcicki, who later became CEO of YouTube.
12. Google’s first company dog, Yoshka, made history as the first dog to visit the campus.
13. Google’s tradition of colorful office spaces continues to this day.
14. In 2006, ‘Google’ became a dictionary verb, meaning “to use the Google search engine.”
15. Google’s first tweet in 2009 was in binary code, translating to “I’m feeling lucky.”
16. Google offers scholarships to students to encourage careers in technology.
