SehaJ
Troublemaker
Welcome to the interactive timeline of Google history!
Travel through time by dragging the timeline or the slider below. Click on any event to see more information.
http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday/#start
OR read the complete non-interactive text format below...
Google Milestones
Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life. We've captured some of the key milestones in Google's development.
1995-1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
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
Omid Kordestani joins to run sales -- the first non-engineering hire.
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
We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world's largest search engine.
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
Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
Google.com is available in 26 languages.
April
Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.
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
A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.
December
Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.
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
Google News launches with 4000 news sources.
October
We open our first Australian office in Sydney.
December
Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).
2003
January
American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.
February
We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.
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
We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.
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
Our index of web pages reaches 8 billion.
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
We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.
Google Maps goes live.
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
Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users.
For April Fool's, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.
Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.
Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.
My Search History launches in Labs, allowing users to view all the web pages they've visited and Google searches they've made over time.
We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.
May
We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.
Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.
Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle ) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.
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.
.... more at the above link...
Travel through time by dragging the timeline or the slider below. Click on any event to see more information.
http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday/#start
OR read the complete non-interactive text format below...
Google Milestones
Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life. We've captured some of the key milestones in Google's development.
1995-1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
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
Omid Kordestani joins to run sales -- the first non-engineering hire.
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
We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world's largest search engine.
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
Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
Google.com is available in 26 languages.
April
Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.
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
A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.
December
Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.
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
Google News launches with 4000 news sources.
October
We open our first Australian office in Sydney.
December
Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).
2003
January
American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.
February
We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.
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
We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.
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
Our index of web pages reaches 8 billion.
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
We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.
Google Maps goes live.
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
Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users.
For April Fool's, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.
Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.
Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.
My Search History launches in Labs, allowing users to view all the web pages they've visited and Google searches they've made over time.
We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.
May
We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.
Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.
Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle ) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.
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.
.... more at the above link...
