(Reuters) – More than 25 years ago, two students at Stanford University brainstormed in their dormitory and came up with an idea – to create an internet search engine that would organize web pages and also rank them.
Initially called BackRub, the startup grew into one of the world’s most valuable and influential companies, Google.
Google’s products, including Gmail and search, are now used by billions and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, rank among the richest people in the world.
Here are some milestones in the history of the tech giant, whose parent is now known as Alphabet:
YEAR EVENT
1995-1996 Page and Brin meet at Stanford University and
create a search engine named BackRub.
1998 The startup, now renamed Google, gets $100,000
in funding from Sun Microsystems co-founder
Andy Bechtolsheim.
1999 Google announces $25 million in funding from
Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins in its
very first press release, and officially
announces the term “Googlers” to the world.
June 2000 Google becomes the default search engine
provider for Yahoo, one of the most popular
websites at the time.
October Launches AdWords, the online advertising
2000 platform that would become core to Google’s
business.
2001 Eric Schmidt is named Google’s chief executive
officer and chairman of the board of
directors.
April 2004 Google announces it is testing the release of
Gmail, with up to 1GB of storage capacity.
August Launches initial public offering of roughly
2004 19.6 million shares, at an opening price of
$85 per share.
February Launches Google Maps for desktop.
2005
August Acquires mobile startup Android.
2005 Launches Google Talk instant messaging
service.
2006 Buys online video service YouTube for $1.65
billion.
April 2007 Announces acquisition of web ad supplier
DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
May 2007 Introduces universal search that lets users
access search results across all content
types, like images, videos and news, at once.
September Debuts first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 or
2008 HTC Dream.
Launches Google Chrome web browser.
January Launches smartphone, Nexus One, co-developed
2010 with HTC.
March 2010 Stops censoring search results in China,
leading to its banning in the country.
October Google tests out its first self-driving
2010 vehicles with a small fleet of Toyota Prius
cars in California.
June 2011 Launches Google+ social networking service,
which was shut down in 2018.
August Announces acquisition of Motorola Mobility,
2011 which includes Motorola’s cellphone and TV
set-top box businesses, for $12.5 billion.
2012 Launches Google Glass.
2013 Announces acquisition of Israeli mapping
startup Waze for about $1 billion.
2014 Announces in January that it will acquire AI
firm DeepMind.
In the same month, announces a $3.2 billion
deal to buy smart thermostat and smoke alarm
maker Nest Labs.
2015 Announces plans to create a new publicly
listed company, Alphabet, which will house
Google and other units, including YouTube and
research and venture capital businesses.
Sundar Pichai named CEO of Google.
October Launches the first Pixel smartphone.
2016
November Launches Google Home smart speaker.
2016
June 2017 The European Commission fines Google 2.42
billion euros for violating the neutrality of
its search.
February Google reports full-year sales of over $100
2018 billion a year for the first time.
July 2018 The European Commission fines Google 4.34
billion euros for anti-competitive practices
with respect to its Android operating system.
March 2019 The European Commission imposes a 1.49 billion
euros fine for anti-competitive practices with
respect to the company’s online advertising
business.
June 2019 Google announces acquisition of analytics
startup Looker for $2.6 billion.
November Announces acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1
2019 billion.
December Co-founders Page and Brin announce they are
2019 stepping down as CEO and president,
respectively; Pichai becomes CEO of Alphabet.
2020 Alphabet hits $1 trillion in market
capitalization.
January The company cuts 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its
2023 workforce.
February Google announces Bard, a generative AI-powered
2023 chatbot that can produce text content and
fetch information off the internet. However, a
factual error in the AI tool’s demo tanks
Alphabet shares, erasing $100 billion from the
company’s market capitalization.
Susan Wojcicki, one of Google’s first
employees, steps down as YouTube CEO; Neal
Mohan replaces her.
March 2023 Begins rolling out Bard to some users.
(Reporting by Chavi Mehta, Arsheeya Bajwa, Yuvraj Malik, Samrhitha Arunasalam and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
