The creation story of Google, now known as Alphabet Inc.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University. The company was born out of a research project they started in January 1996, initially called "Backrub." This project was aimed at creating a search engine that could rank web pages based on their importance by analyzing the number and quality of links pointing to them, a novel approach at the time. The algorithm they developed, later named PageRank, became the foundation of Google’s search engine. Unlike other search engines at the time, which ranked results based on the frequency of search terms on a page, PageRank evaluated the importance of pages, delivering more relevant search results to users. Initially, the company operated out of a rented garage in Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki, who would later become the CEO of YouTube. Google quickly grew in popularity due to its clean, minimalist design and highly accurate search results, standing out in a crowded market dominated by giants like Yahoo, AltaVista, and Excite. The name "Google" itself is a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, reflecting the founders’ mission to organize the vast amount of information on the web. By the end of 1998, Google was already processing 10,000 search queries per day, a significant achievement for such a young company. Google's rise was meteoric. By 1999, it had outgrown its garage workspace and moved to a larger office in Palo Alto, California. That same year, it received a $25 million round of venture capital funding, enabling further expansion. Google continued to innovate, adding new features like AdWords, a self-service ad program that became the company’s main revenue source, and Google Images, Google News, and eventually Gmail. Today, Google is a cornerstone of the internet, having expanded far beyond search to become a global technology giant involved in everything from digital advertising to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and autonomous vehicles. Hashtags #GoogleOrigins #InternetHistory #TechInnovation #MomentsOfLife #MoofLife_Moment #MoofLife