Google Turns 28: Hyderabad: Google is celebrating its 28th birthday on September 27, 2026, marking another year since Larry Page and Sergey Brin began building the search engine that would transform the internet.
Google has marked the occasion with its annual birthday celebration on its homepage. The anniversary highlights the journey of a company that grew from a Stanford research project into a global technology ecosystem.
Its products now span Search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Android, Chrome and artificial intelligence services such as Gemini.
Google Turns 28 | From Stanford Project to Google
Google’s story began at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, when Page and Brin worked on a search engine that used links to determine the importance of web pages.
The project was initially called BackRub. Its approach eventually became the foundation for PageRank, which helped rank pages based on their link relationships and relevance.
The name was later changed to Google, inspired by “googol”, the mathematical term for the number one followed by 100 zeros. The name also reflected the founders’ ambition to organise the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.
In August 1998, Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Page and Brin a $100,000 cheque. Google Inc. was formally established soon afterward.
The company’s first office was a garage in Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki, who later became YouTube’s CEO. The early Google team worked with basic desktop computers and a ping-pong table before the company expanded beyond the garage.
Google’s early history also included an unusual first server. The company built its initial server housing with Lego bricks, reflecting the unconventional approach of its early development.
Google Turns 28 | Why Google Celebrates Its Birthday on September 27
Google’s incorporation date and birthday celebration date are not the same.
Google Inc. was established in September 1998, while September 27 later became the date associated with the company’s annual birthday celebration.
Google itself has acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the exact birthday. The company celebrated its 20th anniversary on September 27, 2018, while noting that the precise date remained a matter of debate.
The date has nevertheless become a familiar annual Google tradition, with special homepage artwork and other celebrations marking the occasion.
The Google Doodle tradition itself also dates back to 1998. The first Doodle featured a simple stick figure behind the Google logo to tell users that the company’s team was away attending the Burning Man festival. What began as a simple out-of-office message later developed into a worldwide feature celebrating people, events and cultural occasions.
Gmail, Maps and YouTube Expand Google
Google expanded rapidly beyond web search during the 2000s.
Gmail launched in 2004 with 1 GB of free storage. Google Maps followed in 2005, adding mapping and navigation services to the company’s growing portfolio.
In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. The video platform subsequently became one of the most important parts of Google’s wider ecosystem.
Google later launched Chrome and expanded its presence in mobile technology through Android, which became a major part of its consumer technology business.
The company also moved into other areas, including cloud computing, hardware and digital services.
From Google to Alphabet
Google underwent a major corporate restructuring in 2015 with the creation of Alphabet Inc. as its parent company.
The restructuring separated Google’s core internet businesses from several other ventures operating under the broader Alphabet structure.
Sundar Pichai became Google’s chief executive as part of the restructuring and later also became Alphabet’s CEO.
Google’s Shift Towards Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has become one of Google’s major areas of development.
The company has developed machine-learning technologies that have influenced products such as Search. Its BERT model helped improve how systems understood language and the context of search queries.
Google later expanded its generative AI work through the Gemini family of models.
Gemini is designed to work across different types of information and support tasks including reasoning, coding and content creation. AI has also become increasingly integrated into Google Search and other products.
Google’s Growing Role in Education
Google’s products have also become part of education and academic research.
Google Scholar provides access to academic literature, while Google Classroom gives schools and educators tools to manage assignments, lessons and communication.
YouTube has also become a major source of educational content, with lectures, tutorials and learning videos covering subjects ranging from school-level education to specialised academic topics.
Twenty-eight years after Google Inc. was established, the company has grown far beyond its original search engine.
From two Stanford students working on BackRub to a global ecosystem spanning Search, YouTube, Android, Gmail and Gemini, Google’s history reflects the rapid expansion of internet technology over the past three decades.
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