Earlier this week, the company celebrated its 11th birthday and choose to mark the occasion with , a fun take on their . The unique logo illustrated Google's eleven years in operation by adding an extra L to the company's name to form a number eleven.
Google's . There are those who think that Google should bring out the cake on the September 4, the day in 1998 that and officially became Google, Inc. Still others think that Google should recognize September 15, 1997 as its founding date, as that is when Google registered the google.com domain. But despite the debate, Google has celebrated its anniversary on September 27 for the past few years now, making the date somewhat official.
Any birthday offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past, so just what has Google been up to in the last eleven years?
With 1997 behind them, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dropped the in favor of Google, a play on the . With the Google.com domain registered and a healthy $100,000 investment from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the two Stanford students in California's Menlo Park.
With a makeshift office in place, Google made it official and filed for incorporation as "" on September 4, 1998. As the rest of year played out, Google began to receive positive support in the press, and the company also hired their first employee, Craig Silverstein.
Thanks to its growing workforce, the fledgling company moved twice in 1999. Google outgrew its modest garage and relocated briefly to a more suitable location in Palo Alto. In June, the company released , detailing how the firm had secured $25 million of funding.
During the second half of the year, as the company reached forty employees, Google moved once again to offices in Mountain View, with an in-house chef included. This year also saw Google drop the exclamation mark from their logo and .
2000 was a year of growth, as along with the search engine reaching a milestone of one billion pages indexed, the website also expanded to support over fifteen languages including Chinese, French, German Japanese and more.
How things change. This year (2000) also saw Yahoo! reveal that they will be using Google as their default search provider. At the time this was a big deal, as Yahoo! was once one of the darlings of search, which Google had originally set their eyes on to compete with; mission accomplished? Of course today paints a very different picture as now both with the search giant that Google has become.
Before the year was out Google also found time to launch the immensely successful AdWords program, and their Toolbar browser plug-in. With the year drawing to a close it was pretty clear that the search engine was on a meteoric rise, as Google was now handling nearly 100 million search queries a day.
With the search engine now available in over twenty-five languages, it only seemed right that the company would expand on a global level with the opening of its first international office in Tokyo. 2001 also saw , who started at Google as the Chairman of the Board, before quickly moving on to .
With the Google search index approaching three billion webpages, it seemed the perfect time to tackle a new type of search: Images. Google launched its Image Search service in July, and initially had an index of over 250 million images.
2002 saw Google launch a range of new products, including the , the experimental Google Labs, and the popular , a product of the company's so-called "". Geeky Google also decided to offer a Klingon translation of the site for all those Star Trek fans out there, bringing the total number of supports languages to over seventy. Spiderman, Warcraft 3 and pop star Shakira were amongst the most common search terms of the year.
2003 was one verbose year for the search-engine giant. It began in February when , creators of the Blogger service, which allowed the masses to publish their thoughts online with ease. Soon after the acquisition, Google's company name was announced as a recognized verb, to "google it" had become synonymous with search, however and protect their strong brand.
In December the Google Print was launched: Now known as , the service allows users to view excerpts from thousands of books in digital form. Classic books and their film adaptations, such as Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter, were some of the most searched for terms on Google in 2003.
Without a doubt 2004 biggest Google news was the introduction of Gmail. The beta launched on April Fools Day, but Google made sure that Gmails was no joke, offering a of storage along with a speedy user experience and the beauty of Google's search technology built right in to your inbox. The service launched as a strictly invite-only affair, which resulted in an online gold rush of those hoping to land an invitation. After five years, early in June of 2009.
2004 also saw Google move to its Mountain View, California "" headquarters, where the company still resides today. In addition, Google opened a research and development center in Tokyo and a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. With over three thousand employees, a range or products under its belt and over eight billion items in its search index Google's growth continued to amaze.
In 2005, Google's ongoing effort to organize the world's information continued as . Sicne then, Google has continually improved the mapping service, adding new features such as satellite views and directions, as well as increasing the number of new searchable locations. , a 3D satellite photography-based mapping application, soon followed, further complimenting Google's range of location services.
2005 also saw the release of the customizable home page, RSS feed manager and . Optimized mobile versions of Gmail, Blogger, and Search were also released.
Oh, and could you imagine naming your newborn baby "Google"? 2005.
Ending months of speculation, in late 2006 in a massive $1.65 billion stock transaction.
The year started with Google expanding into new territories once again, with Google Maps making its way to Australia and the Google Docs suite of tools being made available in several additional languages. Gmail was also made available to all, no longer requiring an invitation.
The biggest innovation from Google in 2007 was the addition of street level photography to Google Maps. Dubbed , the service lets you view and explore a number of US locations at street level. Naturally, Street View's introduction caused some controversy as it raised .
Popular search terms in 2007 included the iPhone, Facebook and Second Life. Since Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the has grown into an outright juggernaut: Even has her own YouTube channel.
Last year Google celebrated their tenth year in operation, and showed no signs of slowing down. The company released its first iPhone application, expanded Street View's coverage to include a number of additional countries, revealed a new version of its photo management app, and , a Wikipedia-type service.
In its biggest move of the year, Google announced that it would enter the browser wars with . The open source, and featured a minimalist interface and home page with shortcuts to frequently visited pages--features that have made their way into other browsers since then.
Later in the year, Google's foray into software continued as the , Google's open-source mobile OS, hit the scene.
2009 has been a busy year so far for Google, and it isn't over yet. So far Google has , introduced its , taken you to Mars with a and as Google Voice, to name but a few things.
Google also in May of this year. Wave combines a range of communication and social networking activities into a single web application and is expected to be available to the masses later this year.
The biggest news from Google this year came when the firm announced that it . Google Chrome OS is expected to land next year, and will initially be aimed at low end devices such as netbooks. Several hints at have leaked online, but Google have yet to comment on any supposed screenshots.
With eleven years behind them, . What we can expect next from the search giant is anyone's guess, but in the immediate future we can look forward to taking Chrome OS for a spin, trying out , and watching countless videos on YouTube.
Just be sure to remember this, Google: Don't be evil. Please.
What will Google come up with next? Chime in with your thoughts in the comments.
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