Who founded Google? 5 facts about its early days ahead of Google’s birthday
The search engine operates in 40 countries and has 70 offices across the globe
GOOGLE is the most frequently-used search engine in the world, and its founders met by chance before kickstarting the $110.8billion company 20 years ago.
But who founded it and what don't we know about it? Read on below...
Who founded Google?
Google was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page during their PhD research project at Stanford University in California.
The site celebrates its birthday on September 27 every year.
The two students met by chance, as Page, 22 at the time considered attending Stanford University for his PhD while Brin, then 21, was assigned to show Page around campus.
In 2008, Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, told before the company went public in 2004, that the trio of Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin agreed to work together for 20 years.
The search engine operates in 40 countries and has 70 offices across the globe.
Google now has an annual revenue of an estimated $50 billion and they make 99% of their profits from revenue that comes from its advertising.
5 facts about its early days
1. Google was originally named BackRub
Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.
The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998.
2. Google’s first doodle was a Burning Man stick figure
The inaugural doodle was an out-of-the-office message that Page and Brin created in August of 1998 to let people know they’d shipped off to the Burning Man festival.
The future billionaires positioned the iconic Man behind the second “o” in Google’s logo.
3. Google’s first office was a rented garage
Starting in September 1998, the company’s first workspace was Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California.
Wojcicki was Google’s first marketing manager and is now the CEO of YouTube.
Brin then married Wojcicki's sister Anne, who founded 23andMe.
4. It speaks many languages
Google supports more than 100 languages and can translate 37 languages via photo, 32 via voice in "conversation mode", and 27 via real-time video in "augmented reality mode".
In 2000, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish were the first 10 language versions of the site to be available to the public.
5. Gmail was launched on April Fool’s Day
Google introduced Gmail on April 1, 2004, in a hilarious announcement that was initially believed to be a joke.
No one could believe Google was offering 1GB of free storage. Gmail now has more than 1.4 billion monthly active users.