We all use Google. It has transformed our lives. But where did it come from? Glad you asked…
1995 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford University. They bond over being clever clogs.
1997 – While most of us are thinking up snappy Hotmail addresses and believing ourselves to be tech geniuses for writing an email, some actual geniuses register the name Google and make the first search engine that actually searches.
1998 – Google gets an office (a garage) and an employee. It’s going well. Some guy gives them a bit of cash to think up cool stuff. The boys go to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada instead.
1999 – Burning Man must have inspired them – the company gets an actual office and has 8 employees, a logo, a chef and a dog.
2000 – Shock, horror! The millennium bug doesn’t happen AT ALL and Google is released in 15 languages.
2001 – Google channels its nerdy roots and is released in the Star Trek language: Klingon.
2002 – Google opens an office in Sydney. Clever hipsters line up in droves for a shot at working there.
2005 – Google Maps goes live. Overnight all married couples stop fighting in the car.
2007 – Google is announced as the ‘BEST COMPANY TO WORK FOR IN THE WHOLE WORLD’. Google employees are left feeling smug and well fed, thanks to their chef. Android is born, the iPhones slightly less loved little brother.
2008 – Street View is released. Everyone logs on to see the photo of their house in terror; will I be naked in the open window? Or will I be blowing my nose for everyone to see when they Google my address FOREVER?
2009 – Google goes green. The Mountain View office gets some goats to mow the lawn in a low-carbon way.
2010 – Google decides the world needs cars that can drive themselves and announce that development has begun. Many of us wonder why but still think it’s pretty cool.
2011 – The Google Art Project is launched, giving virtual tours of the worlds most famous art galleries. Another reason for Americans to never travel abroad.
2012 - Psy’s Gangnam Style becomes the most-watched video of all time—the first and only YouTube video to reach 1 billion views
2013 – Google encourages us to think about our death with Inactive Account Manager, which lets you to tell them what to do with your data from Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason ie; DIE.
2014 – Google disables more than 500 billion fake ads during the year, saving gullible people billions in scams and fake products.
2015 – Consumers decide that Google Glass is creepy, ugly and weird and no one would ever use it. Back to the drawing board. Hey brainiacs, go have a healthy, free snack, a snooze in a pod or play table tennis in your ridiculously awesome offices and dream up something else awesome. You can’t win ‘em all.
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