Google

When Larry met Sergey

Summer 1995

Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 24, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 23, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

New search tool named BackRub

January 1996

Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.

BackRub search index grows

February 1996

BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year – eventually taking up too much bandwidth.

Google.com registered as a domain

15 September 1997

Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

Andy Bechtolsheim is first Google investor

August 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.

Danny Sullivan's early review

4 August 1998

Search engine analyst Danny Sullivan’s first report on Google, “Counting Clicks and Looking at Links,” notes “I think many people will be pleased” with their Google search results.

Google rents a Silicon Valley garage

September 1998

Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.

Google incorporates

4 September 1998

Google files for incorporation in California. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company’s name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim’s check

Early technical specs detailed

20 September 1998

The Stanford version of Google.com included this "About" page.

Employee #1: Craig Silverstein

21 September 1998

Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he’s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

Google named Top Search Engine

December 1998

”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.

11 November 1998

Original home page prototype!!!!!!

Google opens Palo Alto office

February 1999

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

Employee #11: Omid Kordestani

3 May 1999

Omid Kordestani joins to run sales - the first non-engineering hire.

Google funded by major venture capital firms

7 June 1999

GOOGLE's first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing "Googlers" as "people who use Google."

Fish food

February 1999

The first snack GOOGLE ordered for their office, other than beverages, was Swedish Fish.

GOOGLE hits the slopes

21 March 1999

GOOGLE's first-ever company ski trip takes place when Googlers pile into a van and head for Tahoe, Calif. The “winter trip” tradition has since expanded and changed – in 2008, for example, Googlers in Zurich skiied while those in California went to Disneyland.

Googler, n.

June 1999

They use "Googler" to refer to employees of Google. Other internal terms stemming from this use include: Noogler (new Googler), Gaygler (gay Googler), doogler (dog owning-Googler), carpoogler (share a ride?), and Greygler (a Googler of a "certain age").

Google moves to new Mountain View offices

26 August 1999

Google move to their first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

Charlie Ayers hired as first Google chef

November 1999

Charlie Ayers joins as Google’s first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company’s 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

First positive reviews

1998-1999

Early press reports and reviews of the Google search engine are positive.

Year-end look at Google search trends

December 1999

The most frequent queries on Google.com for 1999 were:

1. pokemon


2. apollo


3. slashdot


4. y2k


5. trenchcoat mafia


6. hurricane floyd


7. kosovo


8. DeCSS


9. MIT University


10. star wars

Google grows up, calms down

6 November 1999

Google drop the exclamation mark from their name and adds a link for searches limited to U.S. government documents.

Google in 10 languages

9 May 2000

The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Dani

Google wins first Webby Awards

12 May 2000

Google win their first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).

Yahoo! signs up for Google search

26 June 2000

They forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.

Search index: 1 billion pages

26 June 2000

Google becomes the world's largest search engine; They announce the first billion-URL index.

Google in Chinese, Japanese, Korean

12 September 2000

Google start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean - bringing their total number of supported languages to 15.

First April Fool's joke

1 April 2000

Google announce the MentalPlex: Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

Google AdWords

23 October 2000

Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

Google Toolbar

11 December 2000

Google Toolbar is released - a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

Year-end look at Google search trends

December 2000

Ten search queries that “spiked” dramatically when compared to the previous year offer a glimpse at what was on Google's collective minds in 2000 (and are linked to the search results for that year’s Google News Archive):

1. napster


2. britney spears


3. olympics


4. gnutella


5. vote


6. economy


7. big brother


8. cnn


9. survivor


10. tour de france

The world's largest search engine Home Page

11 July 2000

The search index includes more than 1 billion items.

17 January 2001 : Wayne Rosing hired as Engineering VP

Google announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as GOOGLE's first VP of engineering operations.

12 February 2001 : Deja Usenet acquired

Google's first public acquisition: Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. Google add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

26 March 2001 : Eric Schmidt named chairman

Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.

27 March 2001 : Google in 26 languages

Google.com is available in 26 languages

14 March 2001 : Meng's Gallery begins

Al Gore visits campus, and Googler Tan Chade-Meng has his picture taken with the former Vice President. Thus begins Meng's Presidential Gallery, a collection of photos Meng has taken with many of Google's VIP guests.

March 2001 : FIGS+CJK, n.

The acronym "FIGS" is our internal shorthand for French-Italian-German-Spanish; "CJK" stands for Chinese-Japanese-Korean. For several years, product plans would include these letters to signify that google were developing for this group of languages. (For most launches today, google design for many more languages than these seven.)

31 March 2001 : Getting centered

The Google logo is now centered on the page; They also offer a catchy slogan each day, outlined in red.

1 August 2001 : First international office: Tokyo

They open their first international office, in Tokyo.

6 August 2001 : Eric Schmidt named CEO

Eric Schmidt becomes Google's CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

1 October 2001 : First search partnership in Latin America

A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

28 July 2001 : Google Image Search

Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

11 December 2001 : Search index: 3 billion

Keeping track: Index size grows to 3 billion web documents.

20 December 2001 : Year-end look at Google search trends

They release their first annual Google Zeitgeist, a visual look at what millions of people searched for over the year just ending. And they also show the top ten fastest-rising queries for 2001 (linked to the Google News Archive results for each query), indicating their special "top of mind" quality.

1. nostradamus


2. cnn


3. world trade center


4. harry potter


5. anthrax


6. windows xp


7. osama bin laden


8. audiogalaxy


9. taliban


10. loft story

September 2001 : i18n, abbr.

An abbreviation for "internationalization." Instead of writing out the 20-letter word, google's efficient engineers use i18n to signify products that will launch in multiple countries and languages (18 letters fall between the first and last letters "i" and "n"). (See also: l10n, an abbreviation for localization.)

December 2001 : Zeitgeist, n.

The word "zeitgeist" seems well-suited to convey the magic of search results when viewed in the aggregate. The more people are searching online, the more patterns there are to learn from about what's on Googles minds. "Zeitgeist" is meant to reflect "the outlook or general feeling characteristic of a time or cultural period," as one definition puts it

1 May 2002 : Partnership with AOL

Google announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.

4 February 2002 : tlhIngan majQa'!

Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.

1 April 2002 : Birdbrains

For April Fool's Day, they announce that pigeons power their search results.

11 February 2002 : Google Search Appliance

The first Google hardware is released: it's a yellow box that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.

20 February 2002 : AdWords now cost-per-click

Google released a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

11 April 2002 : First Google APIs

They release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

21 May 2002 : Google Labs

Google release Labs for users to try out beta technologies fresh from their R&D team.

13 August 2002 : First Google Dance

Google hold a party dubbed the Google Dance at their Mountain View office in conjunction with an annual search engine marketing conference.

28 October 2002 : Australia office opens (First Australian office in Sydney)

23 September 2002 : Google News

Extra! Extra! Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

September 2002 : 20% time, n.

Engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on something that is not their main project. Google News started as a 20% time project (so did Gmail).

12 December 2002 : Froogle

Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).

31 December 2002 : Year-end look at Google search trends

Another year. Another Year-End Zeitgeist is released, showing what millions searched for in 2002. The top ten fastest-rising queries for the year (linked to the Google News Archive) hint at what is at the top of google's minds:

1. spiderman


2. shakira


3. winter olympics


4. world cup


5. avril lavigne


6. star wars


7. eminem


8. american idol


9. morrowind


10. warcraft 3

13 January 2003 : Linguists recognize the word "google"

American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.

17 February 2003 : Blogger.com acquired

Google acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

4 March 2003 : Google AdSense

Google announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, they acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

1 April 2003 : Google Grants

Google launch their in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

1 October 2003 : Programmers attend first Code Jam

Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at their first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

Link : Code Jam 2003

17 December 2003 : Google Print

Google launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.

31 December 2003 : Year-end look at Google search trends

Google ring out the year with another Zeitgeist, their annual look at the most searched-for topics on Google.com. Plus, the top ten fastest-rising queries (each linked to results from the Google News Archive) show what’s on theirr minds:

1. britney spears


2. harry potter


3. matrix


4. shakira


5. david beckham


6. 50 cent


7. iraq


8. lord of the rings


9. kobe bryant


10. tour de france

Stay tuned for the the years 2004-2008 Google activities.

It will be published soon. Till then just share what you feel about this lens and yes if you like the effort don't forget to rate and favourite the lens!!!