Google’s 20th birthday: Google Doodle celebrates the search engine’s milestone 

Happy birthday, Google!

The tech giant is celebrating its 20th birthday with a new Google Doodle marking the special occasion. The multi-billion dollar technology titan has certainly come a long way from its humble beginnings in the dorm rooms of Stanford University just two decades ago.

Here’s a look at the history of Google and what a Google Doodle is. 

History of Google

Google’s history dates back to 1995 at Stanford University in Stanford, California after prospective graduate school student Larry Page met Sergey Brin, a student at the college assigned to show him around.

After becoming friends, both Page and Brin developed a search engine from their dorm rooms known as Backrub in 1996 designed to improve online search by using links to determine the importance of website pages.

After being renamed Google shortly thereafter, Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim contributed $100,000 (£75,952) towards the startup in August 1998, helping Page and Brin officially incorporate Google on September 4, 1998.

The new investment in the fledgling company allowed Page and Brin to move to a new location and work out of a garage in Menlo Park, California owned by employee and future YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Google grew rapidly in its early years and eventually settled on a new headquarters in Mountain View, California in 2003. The company launched its initial public offering on NASDAQ in August 2004 and soon rolled out a number of new services over the years, including Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005 and Google Chrome in 2008.

The company also launched its mobile operating system Google Android in 2008 and later branched out into social media, establishing the online social network Google+ in 2011.

In October 2015, it became the main subsidiary of the new holding company Alphabet Inc.

Today, Google is the world’s largest search engine and employs roughly 80,050 people as of 2018 while boasting revenues of about $110.9 billion (£84.2b) as of 2017.

What is a Google Doodle?

A Google Doodle is a temporary change to Google’s homepage logo designed to reflect an important event, individual, anniversary, achievement and the like.

Initially introduced in 1998 to mark the Burning Man festival, they were at first created by the company’s co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page before an in-house team called Doodlers was established to produce them on a more consistent basis.

Nowadays, most Google Doodles mark holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween as well as events like U.S. National Voter Registration Day and to commemorate people like Josefa Llanes Escoda and Fred Rogers.