Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998, but the company has always celebrated its birthday on September 27th for over a decade. Today, it’s marking 20 years of Google Search with a slew of interactive features: there’s a video doodle highlighting popular searches over the years, a time capsule of Easter egg Search terms, a street view tour of the original garage in which the company was founded, and finally, a Google Images desktop redesign.
Twenty (ish) years ago, 2 Stanford Ph.D. students launched a new search engine with a bold mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Though much has changed in the intervening years—including now offering Search in more than 150 languages and over 190 countries—Google is still dedicated to building products for everyone.
In keeping with the “popular searches in history” theme, the company has also launched 20years.withgoogle.com , a website dedicated to notable facts from the last 20 years of search trends. Examples: Heath Ledger was the most-searched actor in 2008 (the year of his death), Neymar has been the most-searched soccer player since 2017, and The Real World was the most-searched reality TV show from 1999 to 2001.
