Google is celebrating its 23rd birthday today. The tech giant has come a long way since it was founded. Most of us use Google's search engine or Google services in one way or the other. Be it YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Meet, or any other Google service, if you have an android phone, there is a very high chance that you are trapped in the Google Ecosystem (except if you have a Huawei phone, of course). But how did Google get here? Let us find out!
The Start of BackRub!
Yes, you heard it right. Google was not launched as Google, but as BackRub on Stanford's private network. It was found by Larry Page and Sergei Brin in 1996. It was launched with the motive to crawl and index the pages of Stanford University. The name 'BackRub' was soon changed to Google.
Initial days of Google
The initial days of Google, like any other startup, were not good. Google's first office was in the dorm room of Larry and Sergei. But Google soon started getting noticed by other people. It caught the eye of some Silicon Valley investors too. One such investor, Andy Bechtolsheim, who was also the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, invested $100,000 in Google, and thus Google Inc. was born.
The Google team soon moved from their first 'office' (the dorm room) to a Garage in suburban Menlo Park, California. Can you guess who owned the Garage? The owner of the garage was Susan Wojcicki, who was the 16th employee of Google and is the current CEO of YouTube, the website which is the 2nd most visited today after Google! It is needless to say that they worked day and night to bring Google to where it is today.
The Yahoo! Offer
In 2002, the founders of Google were faced with a very tough decision. Yahoo! had offered to buy Google for $3 Billion. The founders, after much thinking, decided against it. They thought that Google was at least worth $5 Billion. Google, thus, was not sold to Yahoo! What a save, right?
Google after 2002
After the Yahoo! offer, Google went in overdrive! It launched Google News in 2002 itself, which was a game-changer. In 2004, Google launched Gmail, which needs no introduction separately, the name speaks for itself.
In 2005, Google acquired the operating system 'Android' from Andy Rubin and turned it into a masterpiece which, in today's world, is the smartphone operating system with the highest market share. The same year, Google Maps was launched too!
In 2006, for $1.65 Billion Google acquired YouTube, the most popular video-sharing platform and 2nd most visited website today.
Google acquired DoubleClick, an ad company, in 2008 for over $3.1 Billion, stepping foot in the ad industry.
The current CEO of Google since 2015, is Sundar Pichai. Since 2019, he is also the current CEO of Alphabet Inc., which is the parent company of Google.
The year is 2021, and Google has launched its very own smartphone chip 'Tensor', which is yet to be tested as of writing this blog. We will surely see how that performs compared to the Snapdragons and the A15s of the world! It is going to be a very nice and adventurous road ahead for both Google and us, the consumers!
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