Google was born out of a research project conducted by two Stanford University graduate students.
In January 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin began working on a search engine project they had dubbed “BackRub,” which later became known as Google.
The goal of the project was to create a search engine that could search the web more accurately than existing solutions.
The project was initiated in Page's dorm room but moved quickly to the university's computer science department.
Initially, the co-founders worked on their own, but soon they hired other computer science students to help them develop the search engine software.
The company was incorporated in September 1998 and moved its headquarters to Mountain View, California in 1999.
By 2000, Google had acquired several smaller search companies, including Applied Semantics, Deja.com, and Outride. That same year, the company launched its Adwords program, an advertising system based on keywords and pricing models.
This program allowed businesses to purchase sponsored ads for specific queries.
In 2002, Google launched its news service, and in 2004, it introduced the Google Maps application.
In 2005, the company unveiled the first version of Google Earth, which has since become one of the most popular mapping tools on the web.
Google continued to grow rapidly and by 2006, it had become the most used search engine with over 46% market share.
Today, Google is a multinational company that offers a range of products including Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Chrome and Google Drive, among many others.
Google also continues to invest heavily in search engine optimization and artificial intelligence, making it one of the most innovative and powerful tech companies in the world.