Google Founded

Setting the scene

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who incorporated the company in a Menlo Park garage. They had developed the PageRank algorithm in 1996, which ranked web pages by links rather than just keywords, creating a superior search engine. The name Google is a play on 'googol,' the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

What happened

Google's first funding was $100,000 from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolshheim in August 1998. The company operated from a garage rented from Susan Wojcicki (later YouTube CEO). Google.com went live in 1998, handling 10,000 queries daily. Its clean interface and superior results quickly made it popular.

Why it still matters

Google incorporated as a way to organize the world's information. It went public in 2004, launched Gmail, Maps, and Android, and became the dominant gateway to the internet. By 2025, Alphabet (Google's parent) is one of the world's most valuable companies. September 4, 1998, began the company that would shape the information age, demonstrating how a better algorithm could create a global empire.

Background

Google LLC is an American multinational technology corporation focused on information technology, online advertising, search engine technology, email, cloud computing, software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC, and is one of the world's most valuable brands. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has been described as a Big Tech company. Search became a gatekeeper industry.