On September 4, 1998 – Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD students at Stanford University.

 

In September 1998, Google was officially founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD students at Stanford University who shared a vision of making the world’s information more accessible and useful. The duo developed a search engine that stood out from existing ones because of its unique algorithm called PageRank, which ranked web pages based on their relevance and the number of other pages linking to them, rather than just counting keyword appearances. 

This innovation allowed Google to provide more accurate and reliable search results compared to its competitors at the time, such as Yahoo!, AltaVista, and Lycos. They initially operated out of a garage in Menlo Park, California, with financial support from early investors like Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who famously wrote them a $100,000 check before Google was even officially incorporated.

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The founding of Google marked the beginning of a new era in how people accessed and interacted with information. Within a few years, the company rapidly outpaced rival search engines, becoming synonymous with searching the internet itself, so much so that "to Google" became a common verb. Its minimalist homepage design, clean interface, and consistently relevant results helped it win over users worldwide. 

From those humble beginnings, Google evolved into one of the most powerful technology companies in history, expanding beyond search to areas like advertising, email, maps, mobile software, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. The company’s foundation in 1998 thus laid the groundwork for what would become a global tech giant that transformed industries and everyday life.

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