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2011-09-20

Google history

Google


Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life.

We‘ve captured some of the key milestones in Google‘s development.  

                                                                                

      Google timel

   Check out the interactive version of our company history.




                                            



1995-2011 (August)


1995

  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about almost everything during this first meeting.

  • 1996

    • Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
    • BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

    1997

    • Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google—a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

    1998

    August

    • Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn‘t exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

    September

    • Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki‘s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
    • Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company‘s name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim‘s check.
    • Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he‘s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

    December

    • “PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

    • 1999

      February

      • We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees.

      April

      • Yoshka, our first “company” dog, comes to work with our senior vice president of operations, Urs Hoelzle.

      May

      • Omid Kordestani joins to run sales—the first non-engineering hire.

      June

      • Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing “Googlers” as ”people who use Google”.

      August

      • We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

      November

      • Charlie Ayers joins as Google’s first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company‘s 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

      2000

      April

      • On April Fools‘ Day, we announce the MentalPlex: Google‘s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

      May

      • The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.
      • We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).

      June

      • We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
      • We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine.

      September

      • We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

      October

      • Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

      December

      • Google Toolbar is released. It’s a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

      2001

      January

      • We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.

      February

      • Our first public acquisition: Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

      March

      • Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
      • Google.com is available in 26 languages.

      April

      • Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.

      July

      • Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

      August

      • We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
      • Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

      October

      • A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

      December

      • Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.

      2002

      February

      • Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
      • The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
      • We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

      April

      • For April Fools‘ Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
      • We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

      May

      • We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
      • We release Google Labs, a place to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

      September

      • Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

      October

      • We open our first Australian office in Sydney.

      December

    • 2003

      January

      • American Dialect Society members vote “google” the “most useful” Word of the Year for 2002.

      February

      • We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

      March

      • We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google‘s vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquire Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service namedAdSense.)

      April

      • We launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

      October

      • Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

      December

      2004

      January

      • orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.

      February

      • Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
      • Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.

      March

      • We move to our new “Googleplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.
      • We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about ourvision for the enterprise search business.
      • We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

      April

      • For April Fools‘ we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.

      May

      • We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

      August

      • Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.

      September

      • There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

      October

      • We formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.
      • Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGLE or 466453 on your mobile device.
      • Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes “lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet.”
      • We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.
      • Google Desktop Search is introduced: You can now search for files and documents stored on your hard drive using Google technology.
      • We launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service for searching scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
      • We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

      November

      December

      • We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.
      • The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan and Oxford as well as the New York Public Library.

      • 2005

        February

        • We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.
        • Google Maps goes live.

        March

        • We launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.
        • Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.
        • We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

        April

        • Our first Google Maps release in Europe is for the U.K.
        • For April Fools‘, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.
        • Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.
        • Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.
        • My Search History launches in Labs, allowing you to view all the web pages you‘ve visited and Google searches you‘ve made over time.
        • We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.

        May

        • We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.
        • Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: Searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.
        • Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.

        June

        • We hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.
        • Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
        • We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.
        • We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.
        • API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

        August

        • Google scores well in the U.S. government‘s 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We‘ve done so in subsequent years as well.)
        • We launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables you to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily, as well as talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

        September

        • Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.
        • DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.
        • Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.
        • Google Blog Search goes live; it‘s the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

        October

        • Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
        • Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.” Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

        November

        • We release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.
        • We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

        December

        • Google Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site.
        • Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.

        2006

        January

        • Our first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner, graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants.
        • We announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.
        • Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China.
        • We introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.

        February

        • We release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools from Google Talk.
        • Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
        • Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm.
        • Google News for mobile launches.

        March

        • We announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis forGoogle Docs.
        • A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

        April

        • For April Fools‘ we unveil a new product, Google Romance: “Dating is a search problem.”
        • We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
        • We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

        May

        • We release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

        June

        • We announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing your to upload and share your photos online.
        • The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds “Google” as a verb.
        • We announce Google Checkout, a fast and easy way to pay for online purchases.
        • Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
        • Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

        July

        • At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

        August

        • We launch free citywide WiFi in Mountain View.
        • More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project.
        • Star Trek‘s 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use.
        • Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including including Gmail and Calendar, is released.
        • Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

        September

        October

        November

        • The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

        December

        2007

        January

        • We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world‘s largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

        February

        • We release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability.
        • Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian.
        • For Valentine‘s Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only.)
        • Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.
        • The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.
        • We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the U.S.

        March

        April
        • This April Fools‘ Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider)—we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office!
        • We add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.

        May

        • In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.
        • We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site.
        • At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
        • Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.
        • Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
        • On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

        June

        • Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.
        • YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K.
        • We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company‘s on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.
        • We unveil several “green” initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell and more than 30 other companies.
        • Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.

        July

        August

        September

        • AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites.
        • Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.
        • We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.
        • Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

        October

        • We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

        November

        • We announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.
        • Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.
        • Google.org announces RE<C, an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solar thermal power and wind power technologies.

        December

        • The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.
        Back to top

        2008

        January

        • Google.org announces five key initiatives: in addition to the previously-announced RE<C and RechargeIT, there is a new dedication to solutions that can predict and prevent crises worldwide, improve public services and fuel the growth of small enterprises.
        • We bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless world becomes available to consumers.

        February

        • For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.
        • Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables you to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents and calendars.

        March

        April

        • We feature 16 April Fools‘ jokes from our offices around the world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China) and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are “Rickrolled.”
        • A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.
        • Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It‘s a free website-testing tool with which site owners can continually test different combinations of their website content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.
        • We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.
        • We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes (“skins”) for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

        May

        • Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.
        • Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.
        • At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
        • With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.
        • Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.
        • We release Google Health to the public, allowing people to safely and securely collect, store and manage their medical records and health information online.
        • We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.
        • California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle “Up In The Clouds.”

        June

        • Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.
        • With the launch of Google Site Search, site owners can enable Google-powered searches on their own websites.
        • We launch Gmail Labs, a set of experimental Gmail features, including saved searches and different kinds of stars, which let you customize your Gmail experience.
        • A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.
        • For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

        July

        August

        • Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia—the first time it‘s appeared outside of North America or Europe.
        • Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and reduce keystrokes.
        • Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

        September

        • Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.
        • We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
        • We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing you to ”name tag” people in photos.
        • Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.
        • T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built on the Android operating system. At the same time, we release a new Android Software Developer Kit, and the Open Handset Alliance announces its intention to open source the entire Android platform by the end of 2008. The G1 becomes available for purchase in October.
        • We launch Transit for the New York metro region, making public transit information easily available for users of the largest transportation agency in the U.S.
        • Thanks to all of you, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.

        October

        • We release the first draft of Clean Energy 2030, a proposal to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity use and to reduce oil use by cars 40 percent by 2030. The plan could generate billions in savings as well as millions of “green jobs.”
        • We introduce Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch, complete with photos, geo-located Wikipedia articles and the ability to tilt your phone to view 3D terrain.
        • Googlers in Mountain View build a zip line to travel across the small Permanente Creek separating a few of our buildings.

        November

        • In a vote by 5-0, the FCC formally agrees to open up “white spaces,” or unused television spectrum, for wireless broadband service. We see this decision as a clear victory for Internet users and anyone who wants good wireless communications.
        • After we discover a correlation between certain search queries and CDC data on flu symptoms, we release Google Flu Trends, an indicator of flu activity around the U.S. as much as two weeks earlier than traditional flu surveillance systems.
        • We announce the availability of the LIFE photo archive in Google Image Search. Only a fraction of the approximately 10 million photos have ever been seen before.
        • SearchWiki launches, a way for you to customize your own search experience by re-ranking, deleting, adding and commenting on search results. Comments can also be read by other users.

        December

        • We invite musicians around the globe to audition to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world‘s first collaborative online orchestra.
        • Google Friend Connect is available to any webmaster looking to easily integrate social features into their site.
        • Street View coverage more than doubles in the United States, including several states never before seen on Street View (Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota).
        • We partner with publishers to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.
        Back to top

        2009

        January

        • We kick off January with the launch of Picasa for Mac at Macworld.
        • The Vatican launches a YouTube Channel, providing updates from the Pope and Catholic Church.
        • Together with the New America Foundation‘s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers, we announce Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that provides tools to test broadband connections.

        February

        • The latest version of Google Earth makes a splash with Ocean, a new feature that provides a 3D look at the ocean floor and information about one of the world‘s greatest natural resources.
        • We introduce Google Latitude, a Google Maps for mobile feature and an iGoogle gadget that lets you share your location with friends and see the approximate location of people who have decided to share their location with you.
        • After adding Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese and Galician, Google Translate is capable of automatic translation between 41 languages, covering 98 percent of the languages read by Internet users.
        • Our first message on Twitter gets back to binary: I‘m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010. (Hint: it‘s a button on our homepage.)

        March

        • We launch a beta test of interest-based advertising on partner sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising lets us show ads more closely related to what people are searching for, and it gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products or services.
        • We release Google Voice to existing Grand Central users. The new application improves the way you use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription and archive and search of all of your SMS text messages.
        • We celebrate our San Francisco office‘s Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council‘s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. We see it as a sign that we‘re on track with our approach to building environmentally friendly offices.
        • The White House holds an online town hall to answer citizens‘ questions submitted on Google Moderator.
        • We launch new iGoogle backdrops inspired by video games, including classics like “Mario,” “Zelda” and “Donkey Kong.”
        • We announce Google Ventures: a venture capital fund aimed at using our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies.
        • Using our transliteration technology, we build and release a feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type messages in Indian languages like Hindi or Malayalam.
        • Google Suggest goes local with keyword suggestions for 51 languages in 155 domains.

        April

        • Our April Fools‘ Day prank this year is CADIE, our “Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity” who spends the day taking over various Google products before self-destructing.
        • We announce an update to search which enables people to get localized results even if they don‘t include a location in their search query.
        • For India‘s 15th general election, we launch the Google India Elections Centre, where people can check to see if they‘re registered to vote, find their polling place, as well as read news and other information.
        • Over 90 musicians from around the world—including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player—perform in the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
        • We rebuild and redesign Google Labs as well as release two new Labs: Similar Image search and Google News Timeline. Later in the month, we introduce Toolbar Labs.
        • We begin to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. search pages when people search for names, giving people more control over what others find about them when they search on Google.
        • We release 11 short films about Google Chrome made by Christoph Niemann, Motion Theory, Steve Mottershead, Go Robot, Open, Default Office, Hunter Gatherer, Lifelong Friendship Society, SuperFad, Jeff&Paul and Pantograph.

        May

        • To clear brush and reduce fire hazard in the fields near our Mountain View headquarters, we rent some goats from a local company. They help us trim the grass the low-carbon way!
        • At our second Searchology event, we introduce a few new search features, including the Search Options panel and rich snippets in search results.
        • We launch Sky Map for Android, which uses your Android phone to help you identify stars, constellations and planets.
        • Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, wins the second U.S. Doodle 4 Google competition with her doodle “A new beginning.”
        • At our second annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, we preview Google Wave, a new communication and collaboration tool.

        June

        • We add a new dashboard to Google Places which gives business owners information, such as what people searched for to see their listing or how many times their listing appeared in search results, about how customers find their businesses in Google Maps.
        • We introduce two new ways to customize your iGoogle page: the iGoogle Showcase, which lets you see your favorite celebrities‘ homepages look like and add gadgets and more from those pages to your own, and nature themes.
        • Google Squared, a new experiment in Labs intended for certain kinds of complex search queries, collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet.
        • The Google Translator Toolkit is a new set of editing tools that helps people translate and publish work in other languages faster and at a higher quality. Our automatic translation system also learns from any corrections.
        • We announce All for Good. It‘s a single search interface for volunteer activities across many major volunteering sites and organizations that‘s developed using App Engine and Google Base. Many Googlers contributed to the open source project in their 20 percent time.
        • We release a beta version of AdSense for Mobile Applications, which allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in iPhone and Android applications.
        • Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications that allows people in Africa to access information—like health and agriculture tips, news and local weather—using SMS on their mobile phones, and includes a marketplace application for finding buyers and sellers of goods.

        July

        • Both the enterprise and consumer versions of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are now out of beta.
        • We announce that we‘re developing the Google Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system initially targeted at netbooks.
        • We launch Moon in Google Earth on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The tool features lunar imagery, information about the Apollo landing sites, panoramic images shot by the Apollo astronauts and narrated tours.
        • The new comics themes for iGoogle range from classic strips like Peanuts to heroes like Batman to alternative comics from all over the world.
        • We add a search options panel to Google Images, making it easier to find the types of images you need.

        August

        • Any active U.S. service member is invited to sign up for a Google Voice account, to help them keep in better touch with family and friends, especially when deployed abroad.
        • We announce a deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a high-quality video compression technology company.
        • New social features come to iGoogle, including social gaming, media-sharing and to-do list gadgets as well as an update feed for friends‘ activities.
        • Google Insights for Search is now available in 39 languages around the world. While we‘re at it, we introduce a forecasting feature and an animated map.
        • We expand the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos, so you can monetize your viral video and earn revenue even if you aren‘t a member of the Partnership Program.
        • We add Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish to Google Translate, bringing the total number of supported languages to 51—that‘s 2,550 language pairs!

        September

        • We celebrate the birthday of a product nearly as old as Google itself: Blogger. More than 300 million people visit the blogging site every month, and we‘re proud that it continues to be a medium for people around the world to freely express themselves.
        • The search box on our classic homepage gets bigger.
        • FastFlip, an experiment in Google Labs, lets you quickly browse through recent news, headlines and popular topics like a print magazine, while at the same time offering some of the benefits of online news, like aggregation and search over many top publications, personalization and the ability to share content with your friends.
        • We acquire reCAPTCHA, a technology company focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the process that converts scanned images into plain text.
        • In an effort to create a more open display advertising ecosystem for everyone, we introduce the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space.
        • On the birthday of the “father of science fiction,” we unveil the truth behind a mysterious series of doodles in tribute to H.G. Wells.
        • We introduce Place Pages to Google Maps: one page that organizes all the relevant information about a business, point of interest, transit station, neighborhood, landmark or city—in any part of the world—in one place. Place Pages include rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.

        October

        • We begin a series of posts on the Official Google Blog dedicated to the latest and greatest in the world of Google search.
        • Flu Trends, our flu surveillance tool, is now available in 16 additional countries and in 37 languages.
        • We introduce BuildingMaker, a tool for creating buildings for Google Earth that lets you construct a model of a building using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes.
        • We announce an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.
        • Social Search, a new experiment on Google Labs, helps you find relevant public content from your friends and contacts right in your Google search results.
        • Google Maps Navigation, our turn-by-turn GPS navigation system, includes 3D views and voice guidance—and because it‘s connected to the Google cloud, it always includes the newest map data, lets you search by voice or along a route, and provides live traffic data.
        • A new search feature helps you find music information on the web. When you enter the name of a song, artist or album, or even a snippet of lyrics, your search results will include links to an audio preview of those songs provided by our music search partners.

        November

        • The Google Dashboard provides you with greater transparency and control over the data associated with your Google Account.
        • A new series on the Official Google Blog covers what’s new in Google Apps.
        • We add full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts to Google Scholar. We think this addition will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.
        • An experimental feature in Labs called Image Swirl builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.
        • By combining automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system, we offer automatic captions in YouTube. Captions can help the deaf and hearing impaired, enable people around the world to access video content through machine translation, improve search and enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they‘re looking for.
        • A few months after announcing our open source operating system project, we open-source the project as Chromium OS in order to engage with partners, the open source community and developers.

        December

        • A new homepage design shows only our logo, the search box and the buttons upon first loading, and reveals other links on the homepage, such as Gmail or Image Search, when the user moves the mouse.
        • Google Public DNS is part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster. A DNS resolver converts easy-to-remember domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers so that computers can communicate with one another.
        • With our new real-time search feature, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, as well as news headlines and blog posts published just seconds before your search—right on the search results page.
        • Just in time for the holidays, we roll out Mac and Linux versions of Google Chrome, as well as extensions for Chrome in Windows and Linux (all in beta).
        • Living Stories, developed in partnership with The New York Times and The Washington Post, is an experimental format prototype for presenting online news. (We ended this experiment in February 2010, and open-sourced the code for anyone to use.)
        • We introduce a few new features to Google Toolbar, including an easy way to share any page on the web, shortened by a new URL shortener (goo.gl).
        • For the first time, YouTube reveals official Most-Watched lists and some of its fastest-rising search terms for the past year.
        Back to top

        2010

        January

        • We introduce Nexus One, an exemplar of what‘s possible on mobile devices through Android, as well as a Google-hosted web store aimed at providing people with an easier way to buy a mobile phone.
        • Now, you can upload all file types, including large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and more to the cloud throughGoogle Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online.
        • We state our new approach to business in China: Google will no longer censor search results on Google.cn, and we will work to determine how we might operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if possible.
        • On International Data Privacy Day, we publish our privacy principles. We‘ve always operated under these principles, but now codify them to share our thinking as we create new technologies.

        February

        • The first-ever Google Super Bowl ad tells a love story through search terms. This is one of many videos made to celebrate the human quests behind search.
        • In time for the Winter Games in Vancouver, we introduce Street View imagery of Whistler Blackcomb Mountains, gathered with a special camera-equipped snowmobile.
        • Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about things you find interesting—like photos, videos, webpages or whatever might be on your mind—built into Gmail and for mobile.
        • We introduce Safety Mode in YouTube, an opt-in setting to help screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don‘t want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube.
        • We announce a plan to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks, delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, in a small number of trial locations across the United States.
        • We acquire Aardvark, a company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts.
        • The next generation of ad-serving technology for online publishers, DoubleClick for Publishers and DFP Small Business, combines Google‘s technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick‘s display advertising and ad serving experience.

        March

        • We acquire Picnik, a site enabling you to edit your photos in the cloud, without leaving your browser.
        • Stars in search is a new feature that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content.
        • The Google Apps Marketplace is a new online store for integrated business applications that allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps.
        • Bike directions and bike trail data come to Google Maps.
        • Following the January announcement about search in China, we stop censoring our search services–Google Search, Google News and Google Images–on Google.cn, instead redirecting users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk.

        April

        • For April Fools‘ Day, we change our name to Topeka. The change is a tribute to Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google as part of an effort to bring our experimental fiber network to that city.
        • Scientists announce a significant new hominid fossil discovery, made with help from Google Earth, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.
        • New features for real-time search include the ability to search the archive of public tweets and “replay” the conversation from a particular moment in time, as well as a tool called Google Follow Finder that helps you find new people to follow.
        • Google Places (formerly the Local Business Center) gets a new name along with some new features, like showing service areas and, in some cities, the ability to use an easy advertising program called Tags.
        • We launch a Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world.
        • With Earth view in Google Maps, you can explore Google Earth’s detailed 3D imagery and terrain directly in Google Maps, on your browser.
        • Oregon becomes the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state.

        May

        • As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project.
        • In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we provide Google Earth imagery of the spill’s spread.
        • We roll out a refreshed look for our search results, with a new, contextual left-hand panel that highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query.
        • A team of Googlers in London create a photomosaic of the Google logo. (Later, this project becomes the inspiration for acompany contest.)
        • At Google I/O, we announce Google TV, which is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. We’re busy at I/O this year, with a handful of other announcements and updates.
        • In celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, we release our first-ever playable doodle, complete with all 256 levels and Ms. PAC-MAN. It’s so popular we soon give it a permanent home.
        • You have the option to search more securely with SSL-encrypted Google web search.
        • We release a report on our economic impact in the United States: in 2009, we generated a total of $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses, website publishers and non-profits.
        • The 2010 Doodle 4 Google winner in the U.S. is third grader Mackenzie Melton, for her doodle “Rainforest Habitat.”
        • We officially acquire AdMob, a mobile display advertising company.

        June

        • You can now personalize your Google.com with a background image.
        • With help from the Marin Bee Company, we install the Hiveplex–four bee hives painted in Google’s colors, situated in a flowered area on our campus. We have our first honey harvest later in the year.
        • We collaborate with the Guggenheim Museum on a global online initiative, called YouTube Play: A Biennal of Creative Video, to discover the most creative video in the world.
        • We catch football fever, offering ways for fans to stay on top of the 2010 World Cup as well as a lot of thorough analysis ofsoccer search trends.
        • Caffeine, our new indexing system, provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and is the largest collection of web content we‘ve offered.
        • Google Voice is now available to anyone in the U.S.
        • We stop redirecting Chinese users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. Instead, we provide a landing page where users can use Google.cn services that we can provide without filtering, and/or click through to Google.com.hk for search.
        • The Google News homepage is redesigned to make your view of news more relevant and easier for you to share interesting stories.

        July

        • We sign an agreement to acquire ITA, a software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.
        • “Life in a Day” is a cinematic experiment to document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.
        • We acquire Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world.
        • We announce an agreement to purchase the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa.
        • Google Images gets a new look, designed to make it easier for you to take advantage of some of the powerful technology behind Images.
        • Google Apps for Government, our newest edition of Google Apps, includes the same Google applications offered to businesses and everyday users, with specific measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

        August

        • We will not continue to develop Google Wave as a standalone product.
        • We acquire Slide, a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.
        • With Verizon, we announce a joint policy proposal for an open Internet.
        • Voice Actions for Android are a series of voice commands that let you control your phone just by speaking.
        • If you’re in the U.S., you can now call any phone directly from Gmail.
        • Realtime Search gets a new standalone homepage, along with more tools for exploring and refining real-time results.
        • “The Wilderness Downtown” is a musical experience created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google, built with Google Chrome in mind using HTML5 and other technologies.
        • Priority Inbox, an experimental way of handling information overload in Gmail, automatically sorts your email by importance, using a variety of signals.

        September

        October

        November

        December

        Back to top

        2011

        January

        • We announce that co-founder Larry Page will become CEO in April 2011. Eric Schmidt will be Executive Chairman.
        • The first episode of the YouTube World View speaker series airs with President Obama answering citizen questions following his State of the Union address.
        • In the midst of protests in Egypt, we introduce a service called Speak to Tweet: Dial a phone number, leave your tweet as a voicemail and we’ll publish it for you—meaning anyone can have a voice, even without an Internet connection.

        February

        March

        April

        May

        June

        July

        August

        • We agree to acquire Motorola Mobility.
        • We still love Lucy, and we celebrate her birthday with a Google doodle.
        • Games come to Google+.
        • The Street View team goes to the Amazon to capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities.
        • Music discovery site Magnifier is our latest complement to Music Beta.
        • You can now +1 a website and choose to share it with your circles on Google+.
        • We share highlights from our environmentally friendly transportation, food and building programs.
        • Blogger gets a makeover.
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