Google, Inc. is a multinational technology company. It was founded in 1995 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.

Early History

The name Google is a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term referring to a 1 followed by 100 zeros (represented as 1 x 10^100). In 1996, Page and Brin collaborated on a search engine called BackRub. It existed solely on Stanford’s servers and eventually outgrew its space.

In September 1997, Google.com was registered as a domain. In August 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, became the first investor in Google, Inc. On September 4, 1998, Google, Inc. filed for incorporation with its headquarters in friend and current YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park.

Expansion and Growth

February 1999 saw Google getting its first real office in Palo Alto, California. Later in the year, they moved to Mountain View, California. In May 2000, Google launched web searches in 10 new languages. In March 2001, Eric Schmidt joined the company as chairman of the board of directors.

Google Images launched in July 2001 with 250 million searchable images. In August 2001, Schmidt became CEO, while Page became President of Products and Brin became President of Technology. Google News launched in September 2002 with 4,000 news sources.

Recent Developments

In 2015, Google announced a corporate restructuring, forming an umbrella company called Alphabet and naming Sundar Pichai as the new CEO to the core business of Google. Co-founders Page and Brin would run Alphabet, with Page as CEO and Brin as president.

Google has faced several antitrust investigations and lawsuits over the years. In 2020, the US Department of Justice sued Google, alleging the tech company had stifled competition in order to maintain its leading position in the marketplace.

Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.