Eleven Years of Goog11e

On Sunday September 27 2009, Google, the number 1 search engine in theworld, celebrated its 11th birthday with a new logo, featuring an extra“l” to the name Google (anyone saw it?).PCWorld has an article discussing the search and advertising giant’s eleven year history.For most users out there, Lycos, eXcite and Yahoo was probably thesearch engine of choice before Google made its debut in 1998. Googlehas certainly come a long way (thanks to 2 men, Larry Page and SergeyBrin) since its inception as a Stanford University research project in1998, to the global, multi-billion dollar company it today is. Google’sa classic “rags to riches” fairytale if you ask me.

A brief look at Google’s 11 years:

Early Days: 1998
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin dropped the original BackRubmoniker in favor of Google, a play on the mathematical term "googol"Google.com domain registered and with a healthy $100,000 investmentfrom Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the two Stanford students rentedout a $1,700 a month garage space in California's Menlo Park Growth & Expansion: 2000
Google reached a milestone of one billion pages indexed, and alsoexpanded to support over fifteen languages including Chinese, French,German, Japanese and moreYahoo! revealed that they will be using Google as their default search provider The Written Word: 2003
Google acquired Pyra Labs, creators of the Blogger service, whichallowed the masses to publish their thoughts online with ease Google Print was launched: Now known as Google Book Search, the serviceallows users to view excerpts from thousands of books in digital form Email, Google Style: 2004
Google introduces Gmail Google moved to its Mountain View, California "Googleplex" headquarters, where the company still resides today Mapping The World: 2005
Google released Google Maps and subsequently Google EarthRelease of the iGoogle customizable home page, Google Reader RSS feed manager and Google AnalyticsOptimized mobile versions of Gmail, Blogger, and Search were also released A Message From Chad & Steve: 2006
Google acquired online video site YouTube in a massive $1.65 billion stock transaction The Growth Continues: 2007
Google Maps made its way to Australia and the Google Docs suite of tools being made available in several additional languages Gmail made available to all, no longer requiring an invitationGoogle introduced Google Street, an addition of street level photography to Google Maps Going Full Circle: 2008
Google celebrated its 10 anniversary
Google announced open source Google ChromeGoogle released Android, an open-source mobile OS Google At Present: 2009
Google unveiled its Wave service in May this yearGoogle announced plans to release Google Chrome OS News via [PCWorld]