Google is one of the most known technology companies in the world today. It started as a small research project at Stanford University and grew into a company that changed how people find information online. Before becoming part of Alphabet Inc., Google was only a search tool built by two students who wanted to make the web easier to explore.

When Google Was Established

When Google Was Established

Google was officially founded on September 4, 1998, in Menlo Park, California. The company began as a registered business under the name Google Inc. However, the idea behind Google started earlier, in 1996, as a university project.

That project became the base of the search engine we know today. The founders used new ways to organize web pages and rank results, which made their tool faster and more accurate than others at the time.

Founders and the Early Idea

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both Ph.D. students at Stanford, met in the mid-1990s. They shared an interest in how web pages link to one another and how that could help users find better results.

They built a search engine called BackRub in 1996. It ran on Stanford servers and used a system called PageRank to measure the importance of pages based on how many other sites linked to them. This method became the core of Google’s search algorithm.

From BackRub to Google

The name “BackRub” didn’t last long. Larry and Sergey decided to rename their project “Google,” inspired by the math term “Googol”, which means a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name represented their goal of organizing a huge amount of web information.

They registered the google.com domain on September 15, 1997, and started preparing to launch it as a real company. Soon after, their search engine became popular among Stanford students and spread across the web.

Incorporation and Early Growth

In 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote a check for $100,000 to help fund the project. With that support, Google became a legal company on September 4, 1998.

Their first office was a small garage in Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki, who later became YouTube’s CEO. From there, the two founders hired their first employees and focused on improving the search engine’s performance.

Google’s Early Mission and Impact

From the start, Google’s mission was simple:

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

That mission guided their growth into one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet. Over time, Google expanded beyond search to include email, maps, ads, cloud tools, and mobile software.

Today, Google is part of Alphabet Inc., but its original purpose—to help people find accurate information—still shapes everything it does.

Conclusion

Google was established on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. What began as a small research idea at Stanford turned into a global company that transformed how we use the internet.

From BackRub to Google.com, from a garage to Silicon Valley’s heart, the company’s journey reflects how innovation and simple ideas can change the world.