Google’s 25Th Anniversary: How a Research Project Changed the Web

Google 創立 25 周年, or Google’s 25th anniversary, was marked in 2023 as the company reflected on a journey that began with a search project at Stanford University and grew into one of the world’s most influential technology businesses. Its products now shape how people find information, navigate cities, communicate, watch video and use mobile devices.

The anniversary also offered a chance to look beyond the familiar Google logo. The company’s rise was built on a technical idea, a rapidly expanding internet and a business model that connected online searches with advertising. Over 25 years, Google moved from a search engine competing with early web directories to the centre of a much broader ecosystem known as Google Services and Google Cloud.

When Was Google Founded?

Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The date is commonly treated as the company’s founding anniversary. However, the story began earlier. Page and Brin met as graduate students at Stanford University and started working together on a search technology in 1996.

Their first search engine was called BackRub. It examined links between web pages to estimate the importance of a page, rather than relying only on the words appearing on it. The approach was influenced by the way academic papers cite one another: a page linked by many important pages could be considered more valuable than one with few references.

Google’s name came from “googol”, the mathematical term for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflected the founders’ ambition to organise an enormous amount of information. The company’s first office was a rented garage in Menlo Park, California, belonging to Susan Wojcicki, who later became the chief executive of YouTube.

Why Does Google Celebrate on September 27?

Google’s legal incorporation date is September 4, but the company has traditionally celebrated its birthday on September 27. The reason for choosing that particular date is tied to important milestones in the company’s early history, including announcements connected with the size of Google’s search index.

The celebration date has changed during the company’s history. Google has used different dates for its birthday doodles, which has sometimes caused confusion among users. For the 25th anniversary in 2023, Google’s birthday observance again focused on September 27.

The distinction matters because “Google founded date” can refer to several moments: the launch of the BackRub research project, the registration of the Google.com domain, the company’s incorporation or the birthday date used in public celebrations. The clearest official milestone is September 4, 1998, when Google Inc. was incorporated.