1995-1997
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.
1996
- Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students,
begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
- BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year --
eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.
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.
1998
August
- Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a
check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company
called Google Inc.
September
- Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage at 232
Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
- Google files
for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter,
Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's
name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check.
- Larry and Sergey hire Craig
Silverstein as their first employee; he's a fellow computer science
grad student at Stanford.
December
- "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.
1999
February
- We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165
University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.
May
June
- Our 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."
August
- We move to our 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.
November
- 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.
2000
April
- On April Fool's Day, we 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.
May
- The first 10
language versions of Google.com are released: French, German,
Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and
Danish.
- We win our first Webby
Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice
(voted by users).
June
September
- We start
offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total
number of supported languages to 15.
October
- Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online
activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance
feedback.
December
- Google
Toolbar is released.
It's a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting
the Google homepage.
2001
January
- We announce
the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of
engineering operations.
February
- Our first public acquisition: Deja.com's
Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet
discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and
launch it as Google Groups.
March
April
July
- Image Search launches,
offering access to 250 million images.
August
- We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
- Eric Schmidt becomes our
CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and
technology, respectively.
October
December
2002
February
- Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
- 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.
- We release a major
overhaul for AdWords, including new
cost-per-click pricing.
April
- For April Fool's Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
- We 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.
May
- We announce a major partnership with
AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million
customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
- We release Google Labs for users to try out beta
technologies fresh from our R&D team.
September
October
- We open our first Australian office in Sydney.
December
2003
January
- American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word
of the Year for 2002.
February
March
- We 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, we
acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)
April
- We launch Google
Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations
to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.
October
- Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and
recognition at our first-ever
Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.
December
2004
January
- orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.
February
- Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
- Our search index hits a new
milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880
million images.
March
- We move to our new "Googleplex" at 1600
Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a
campus environment.
- We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as
general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for
the enterprise search business.
- We introduce
Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings,
maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)
April
- For April Fool's we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new
research facility on the Moon.
May
- We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg
Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science.
Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada,
Australia and Europe.
August
- Our Initial Public
Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on
Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.
September
- There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102
and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.
October
- We formally open our
office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit
from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of
Ireland, Mary Harney.
- Google
SMS (short message service) launches;
send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device.
- Larry and Sergey are named
Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes "lasting scientific
contributions to human progress in the field of communications science
and the Internet."
- We spotlight our new
engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit
from Sergey and Larry.
- Google Desktop
Search is introduced:
users can now search for files and documents stored on their own hard
drive using Google technology.
- We launch the beta version of Google
Scholar, a free service that helps users search scholarly literature
such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and
technical reports.
- We acquire
Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later
become Google Earth.
November
December
- We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to
attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.
- The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital
scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford,
University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library.
2005
February
March
- We launch code.google.com, a new
place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.
- Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes
and recognition at our first
coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian
Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.
- We acquire
Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create
Google Analytics.
April
May
June
- We hold our first
Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help
computer science students contribute to open source software
development.
- Google Mobile Web
Search is released,
specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
- We unveil Google Earth: a satellite
imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with
mapping capabilities and Google search.
- We release
Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history
will closely reflect your interests.
- API for Maps released;
developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and
sites.
August
- Google scores
well in the U.S. government's 2005 machine translation evaluation.
(We've done so in subsequent years as well.)
- We launch Google Talk, a
downloadable Windows application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM
with friends quickly and easily talk using a computer microphone and
speaker (no phone required) for free.
September
- Overlays in Google Earth illuminate
the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded
victims.
- DARPA veteran Vint
Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.
- Dr.
Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in
China.
- Google Blog
Search goes live;
it's the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular
topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.
October
- Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
- Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event
with Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point."
Since then, the http://www.youtube.com/user/AtGoogleTalks has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe
and India.
November
- We release Google Analytics,
formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and
marketing campaigns.
- We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.
December
2006
January
February
March
- We announce the acquisition
of Writely, a web-based word processing application that
subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.
- A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google
Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial
information.
April
- For April Fool's we unveil a new product, Google Romance: "Dating is a
search problem."
- We launch Google Calendar,
complete with sharing and group features.
- We release Maps for France, Germany,
Italy and Spain.
May
- We release Google Trends, a way
to visualize the popularity of searches over time.
June
- We announce Picasa Web Albums,
allowing Picasa users to upload and share their photos online
- The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds "Google" as a verb.
- Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available
on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French,
Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
- Gmail launches in Arabic
and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.
July
- At Google
Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete
at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the
final round.
August
September
October
November
- The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google
contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than
15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is
chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been
Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.
December
2007
January
- We announce a partnership
with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecom carrier, to
provide mobile and Internet search services in China.
February
- We release Google Maps in Australia,
complete with local business results and mobile capability.
- Google Docs &
Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional
Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese
(Brazil) and Russian.
- For Valentine's Day, we open
up Gmail to everyone.
(Previously, it was available by invitation only).
- Google Apps Premier Edition launches,
bringing cloud computing to businesses.
- The http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3412849248991F4A kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several
2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and
Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.
- We introduce traffic information to Google
Maps for more than 30 cities around the US.
March
April
May
- In partnership with the Growing Connection, we
plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of
which is incorporated into our café offerings.
- We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor
Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support
site.
- At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal
search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all
integrated together in one search result.
- Google Hot
Trends launches,
listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are
searching for at the moment.
- Street View debuts in Google Maps in five
U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.
- On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology
for creating offline web applications.
June
- Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.
- YouTube becomes available in nine
more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland,
Spain, Ireland and the U.K.
- We announce a partnership
with Salesforce.com, combining that company's on-demand CRM
applications with AdWords.
- We unveil several "green" initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at
accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the
completion of our installation of solar
panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be
completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate
Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell, and
more than 30 other companies.
- Google Earth Outreach is introduced,
designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their
causes.
July
August
September
- AdSense for Mobile is introduced,
giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same
ads as standard websites.
- Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X
PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.
- We add
Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.
- Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese
(Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.
October
- We partner with IBM on a supercomputing
initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on
computing challenges.
November
- We announce OpenSocial, a set of
common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.
- Android, the first
open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other
companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we
introduce the $10 million Android Developer
Challenge.
- Google.org announces RE<C, an
initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that
are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solar thermal
power and wind power technologies.
December
- The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on
YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this
way.
2008
January
- Google.org announces five
key initiatives: in addition to the previously-announced RE<C and
RechargeIT, there is a new dedication to solutions that can predict and
prevent crises worldwide, improve public services, and fuel the growth
of small enterprises.
- We bid
in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless
world becomes available to consumers.
February
- For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left
languages, we introduce
a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction
of a query.
- Google Sites, a
revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts.
Sites enables users to create collaborative websites with embedded
videos, documents, and calendars.
March
April
- We feature 16 April Fool's jokes from our offices around the world,
including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense
for Conversations, a Manpower
Search (China), and the Google
Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to
YouTube-featured videos are "Rickrolled."
- A new
version of Google
Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At
the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.
- Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It's a free website-testing tool with
which users can continually test different combinations of their website
content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most
sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.
- We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result
of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.
- We introduce a collection of 70+
new themes ("skins") for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and
designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe
Starck.
May
- Following both the Sichuan
earthquake in China and Cyclone
Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite
information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.
- Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports
Unicode 5.1.
- At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of
functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their
sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery,
message posting, and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial
developer community.
- With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to
the Internet) running low, Google search becomes
available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign
almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf
is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.
- Google
Translate adds 10
more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi,
Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.
- We introduce a series
of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on
the Official Google Blog.
- California 6th grader Grace
Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle "Up In The Clouds."
June
- Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for
the first time.
- A new
version of Maps for
Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more
than 50 cities worldwide.
- For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for
contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.
July
August
- Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia - the first time it's appeared
outside of North America or Europe.
- Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and
reduce keystrokes.
- Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with
news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.
September
- Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule
when the comic book that
introduces our new
open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1.
The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day
later.
- We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential
nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
- We release an upgrade for Picasa,
including new editing tools, a movie maker, and easier syncing with the
web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated
with a new feature allowing users to "name tag" people in photos.
- Google News
Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable
online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news
archives.
- T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built
on the Android operating system. At the same time, we release a new
Android Software Developer Kit, and the Open Handset Alliance announces
its intention to open-source the entire Android platform by the end of
2008.
- Thanks to all of our users, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.
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