Today is a fairly important day for Internet users and especially for Google: the tech giant that greatly contributed to shaping the Internet over the past 18 years. Indeed, today Google is celebrating its 18th birthday, and readers may have already noticed that the company is commemorating the event with a new festive Doodle on its home page. Now, this may have taken you by surprise given the fact that Google took a while to settle on a fixed birthday, but nonetheless, September 27th, 2016 is considered the day that the search engine giant made its first steps into adulthood – at least according to some parts of the world.
Google was founded 18 years ago on September 4th, 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page; two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. Of course, a quick look at the calendar tells us that Google is more than three weeks late in celebrating its own birthday, but that is because Google took a few good years to decide on what now appears to be a fixed birthday. Specifically, in 2003 Google celebrated its birthday on September 8, and one year later the company formally turned 6 years old on September 7. In 2005 the search engine giant acknowledged September 26th as its birthday, and in 2006 Google finally settled on September 27 to commemorate its first day of existence, and has been doing so each year ever since. No one really knows why Google chose this date as its official birthday and why the company didn’t stick with September 4 – the day on which Google was actually founded. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to point out that Google’s first birthday Doodle went live in 2002 on the 27th day of September, and given the company’s fondness for its Doodles, it’s understandable why it may have settled on this particular date four years later.
Short history lesson aside, Google is now one of the world’s biggest companies on the World Wide Web, and since it was founded the company continued to grow and expand in new market areas, including, of course, the mobile niche. Many Internet users today rely on both Google’s search engine as well as Google’s mobile operating system – Android OS – and in some cases, users access these tools using Google hardware, including Nexus smartphones and Chromebooks. Google has become a part of many people’s daily lives over the past 18 years, and we look forward to the company’s future endeavors in new market areas including virtual reality, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence.