September 27 marks Google’s 26th birthday , celebrating more than two decades of revolutionizing the way we access information. The name “Google” is a play on the mathematical term “googol,” which signifies a number with 1 followed by 100 zeros.
This name was chosen to reflect the company’s mission: to organize the vast amounts of data on the internet and make it universally accessible and useful. Over the years, Google has expanded far beyond just being a search engine, now offering services like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Cloud, YouTube, and much more.
Who created Google?
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Their innovative idea was to develop a search engine that could rank web pages based on their relevance, which became the foundation for what we know as Google Search today.
The project quickly evolved, leading to the official launch of the company on September 4, 1998.
Who owns Google now?
Today, Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a conglomerate formed in 2015 during a restructuring of the company. Alphabet was established to separate Google’s main services, such as search and advertising, from its more experimental ventures like Waymo (self-driving cars) and Verily (health sciences).
Alphabet is a publicly traded company, meaning it is owned by shareholders. However, its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, retain significant influence due to their special shares that grant them voting power.
Although Page and Brin have stepped back from daily operations, Sundar Pichai, who became CEO of Google in 2015, is now also the CEO of Alphabet.
He leads the company through its continued expansion into areas like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and hardware.
Today, billions of users turn to Google for a multitude of purposes, from conducting searches and finding jobs to connecting with others and enjoying entertainment, highlighting its immense utility.