Fifteen years ago this month, two Stanford grad students founded a company called Google, named after the mathematical term googol, which represents the number one followed by a hundred zeros. Today’s Google Doodle, a keyboard piñata game, commemorates the big day.
The company that Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded was actually established on September 7, 1998, but the official “birthday” was later switched to September 27, as noted by SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan. Before the search tool had even launched at google.com, Page told Sullivan, “I’d like to build a service where the priority is on giving users great results.”
Fifteen years later - after expanding to everything from email to mobile operating systems to a quest to conquer death - Google has changed the technology landscape forever. And it still boasts a whopping 66.9% marketshare among search engines in the U.S., according to ComScore’s latest rankings. For some extra fun, try typing “google in 1998″ in the google search box to see how far the company has come.
In, TIME
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| Image credits: GOOGLE |
