Every day, millions of people around the world turn to the same place when they need an answer—Google. Whether it’s finding a nearby restaurant, checking a fact, or solving a problem in seconds, the act of “Googling” something has become second nature. But behind that simple search box is a remarkable story of two curious minds who wanted to make the web easier to navigate and ended up changing the world.
It all started in 1995 at Stanford University, when Larry Page, a visiting student from Michigan, met Sergey Brin. The two didn’t hit it off immediately—each thought the other was too opinionated—but they shared a deep interest in solving one of the biggest problems of the early internet: how to organize the overwhelming flood of information online. Most search engines at the time simply matched keywords, often leading to irrelevant results. Page had a different idea. What if web pages were ranked by how many other pages linked to them? That approach could measure relevance more accurately, like academic citations.
Page began building what he called BackRub, a system that analyzed link structure across the web. Brin soon joined the project, and together they began running the system from their dorm rooms. As their idea grew, so did the demand on Stanford’s network. Eventually, they rebranded the project as Google—a play on the word “googol,” which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros—to reflect their ambition of indexing the vast web.
By 1998, they had officially incorporated Google, working out of a garage in Menlo Park. Their search engine was different—clean, fast, and focused purely on results. While other portals were cluttered with ads and news, Google delivered exactly what people were looking for. Within two years, the engine was processing over 100 million searches a day. In the same period, Google quietly launched AdWords, a system that placed small, text-based ads next to search results. It wasn’t flashy, but it was incredibly effective—and would go on to generate the bulk of the company’s revenue for years to come.
In the early 2000s, Google expanded far beyond search. It released Gmail, offering a shocking 1GB of free email storage at a time when competitors offered only megabytes. Google Maps and Earth redefined navigation, while Google News used algorithms to deliver headlines without human editors. When Google went public in 2004, it raised over a billion dollars and instantly made its co-founders billionaires. A few years later, the company made a bold move by acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion. Many questioned the deal, but it turned out to be one of the smartest acquisitions in tech history—ushering in the era of online video.
Around the same time, the world was shifting toward mobile technology. In response, Google developed Android, a mobile operating system that it offered for free to phone manufacturers. The strategy paid off, and today Android powers the majority of smartphones globally. Meanwhile, products like Chrome, Google Drive, Translate, and others helped turn Google into a daily part of billions of lives—not just a search engine, but the foundation of the internet experience.
In 2015, Google announced a major restructuring. The company became a subsidiary of a new umbrella corporation called Alphabet Inc., designed to separate its core business from its more experimental projects. This allowed ventures like self-driving cars, health research, and artificial intelligence to grow more freely. Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Google, later also taking over Alphabet, leading the company with a calm and focused approach.
In recent years, Google has faced growing scrutiny—over privacy, misinformation, its dominance in online advertising, and its influence on global information access. Governments have launched investigations and lawsuits, while employees have protested ethical concerns. Still, Google continues to innovate, especially in the field of AI.
The company’s latest evolution came with the rise of generative AI. In 2023, Google introduced Gemini, a family of powerful language models designed to enhance everything from search to writing tools. This marked a shift in how users interact with technology—not just finding answers, but working with AI to create and solve problems together.
What began as a project in a university dorm room has become one of the most powerful and far-reaching companies on the planet. Google’s story is about more than just success—it’s about the responsibility that comes with organizing the world’s information. And as technology continues to evolve, Google’s mission to make knowledge accessible and useful remains as important as ever.