Google was founded this day in 1998. Here’s a bit more on the journey.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met at Stanford. Brin was a tour guide for Page, who was a new student.
Google was originally called BackRub.
Soon after, it was renamed Google.
The guys used Lego bricks to build a cabinet for their first server.
Their first investment in 1998 was a check for $100,000. They couldn’t deposit it because they hadn’t set up a bank account. But they celebrated at Burger King.
Here’s how Google was evolving:
The first office was in a garage. They rented it from Google’s first marketing manager, Susan Wojcicki. (she now runs YouTube) They paid $1,700 a month in rent. Here’s an early office video tour from the company’s 6th employee:
This was the first production server rack:
Ruth Kedar designed Google’s logo. These were the early iterations:
Google business cards
As for the Google Doodle? It’s hard to take a break when you’re running a startup. The first one was meant to be an out-of-office message when they went to the Burning Man festival.
Meanwhile, the team was growing.
They had moved out of the garage… In 1999, Google had a few dozen employees. Staff meetings included birthday cakes, beer, and silly string:
The world’s curiosity about Google continued to grow. Here’s Sergey explaining Google search in 2001:
Meanwhile, winning the search wars would require Google to lead the way in mobile search.
Google went public in 2004 at a valuation of $23 billion.
Gmail was also launched in 2004.
Google Maps launched the next year.
Also in 2005? The acquisition of Android.
And in 2006? The acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion.
Chrome would come in 2008.
And in 2015, a new parent company name, Alphabet
