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.