Google is celebrating its 28th birthday on September 27 with a special homepage Doodle that looks back at the company’s early days and its remarkable transformation into one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
The nostalgic artwork features an early Google logo as the company marks another year of its journey from a search engine project to a global technology powerhouse.
How Google started
Google was officially incorporated on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were then PhD students at Stanford University.
However, the origins of the company date back to August 1998, when Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 cheque to Page and Brin.
The funding helped formalise the creation of Google Inc. and marked an important milestone in the company’s early development.
Why does Google celebrate its birthday on September 27?
Google’s choice of September 27 as its birthday has an unusual history.
The company celebrated its birthday on different dates in September during the early 2000s. The reason for the changes has never been clearly established.
Since 2006, however, September 27 has been consistently observed as Google’s birthday.
The date is believed to be linked to an important milestone in Google’s web-indexing journey around the same period, although the company has not provided a definitive explanation for the choice.
From search engine to global tech giant
Over nearly three decades, Google has expanded far beyond its original search business.
Its ecosystem now includes products and services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Android and Pixel smartphones.
Google is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence through its Gemini platform, making AI a central part of its current technology strategy.
The company now operates under Alphabet Inc., the parent company created in 2015 to oversee Google and its expanding portfolio of businesses.
As Google marks its 28th birthday, the latest Doodle offers a nostalgic reminder of how far the company has travelled since its beginnings in a Stanford research project.
