Do we have to wish Google? Will Google come to our page to crawl if we wish 😉 Yes! Let’s wish together with sky touching tone “Happy Birthday Google” 🙂 Frankly speaking, we are a bit confused from where shall we start explaining about this big boss, Mr. Search Engine Google.

As we all know Google is father of all search engines which has millions of websites indexed in it. Google started it journey with just one popular product search engine and today we can see it has spread its wings to each and every place.

If we start about explaining about Google we may cross the numbers of indexed pages in Google! But on this big occasion we thought everything about Google in 12 points. Hope you will like these 12 points, the life history of Google 🙂

1. When “Google Guys” met!

In 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 most everything during this first meeting.

Later in March 1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford came together to work on research project in Stanford Digital Library Project. Initially Larry Page started exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web and named it as “BackRub”. Later Brin joined him on this project as they knew each other for sometime. To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm.

Tech tip: A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.

2. When Garage became Google Inc.,

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Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 4, 1998 at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.

3. Googol to Google

The name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. But Enid Blyton, best children’s story teller  used the word decades earlier in “Google Bun” – Chapter IX, The Magic Faraway Tree. The verb, “Google,” was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, “To use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.”

4. 26, June 2000!

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We placed apostrophe (!) in the end to signify something about Yahoo! On 26, June 2000, Yahoo! Inc. (called as Nasdaq: YHOO) and Google Inc. announced they have entered into an agreement that makes Google, one of the fastest growing search engines on the Web, Yahoo!’s® default search results provider.

Google announced the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine. In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own. This cost Google some market share, yet Yahoo!’s move highlighted Google’s own distinctiveness.

5. Other than Search Engine

Before speaking about what was the second product by Google after the world’s largest search engine, let’s speak about its brief history.

Google Guys Brin and Page were against using advertising pop-ups in a search engine, or an “advertising funded search engines” model, and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students. However, they soon changed their minds and early on allowed simple text ads.

Got to know which was the second product by Google? Not yet? That’s fine 🙂

On October 23, 2000 Google for a first time released something other than search engine. Google launched AdWords with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

In the same year released its third product, Google toolbar to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Google said “It’s a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

Tech link: A to Z Google Products.

6. Eric Schmidt the first successor

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On March 26, 2001 Google Inc. announced that Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 45, has joined Google’s board of directors as chairman. Schmidt succeeds Sergey Brin, Google’s founding chairman and current president. Schmidt’s appointment is effective immediately. Google also announced that Schmidt has made a significant financial investment in the company.

August 6, 2001 Google announced that Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 46, has been named chief executive officer. Schmidt, who was appointed chairman of Google’s board of directors in March 2001, succeeds Larry Page, Google’s founding chief executive officer. Page was named President, Products and Sergey Brin, the company’s founding president, was named President, Technology.

7. Gmail and its 5 years Beta tag!

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Gmail or Google mail is also one of the best products by Google. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004. Google had provided 50 invitations per users who registered in the beginning. Gmail became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though still in beta status at that time.

Finally the service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009. Gmail would be the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. By the end of December 2009, it has 176 million users monthly.

8. Doodle for Google

The first Google Doodle was in honor of the Burning Man Festival of 1998. The doodle was first designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, until Larry and Sergey asked then-intern Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Hwang has been designing the Google Doodles ever since.

On Friday, May 21, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pac-Man. It is their first (possibly the world’s first) playable logo. The logo contains an accurate recreation of the Pac-Man game that can be played in a browser (it contains 255 levels).

9. Google and its Acquisition

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Till 2001, Google was working solely and had got a good reputation in web world. But from February 2001, Google started acquiring other companies to make its share still stronger. Till date, Google has acquired 79 companies! First to acquire was Deja’s Usenet business to implement on Google Groups.

These are the top 12 important companies acquired by Google and integrated in its products,

(Date-Company-Business-Google’s Implementation on)

1. July 13, 2004 – Picasa – Image organizer-Picasa and Blogger
2. August 17, 2005 – Android – Mobile Software – Android
3. December 20, 2005 – AOL – Broadband Internet Access – Search
4. January 17, 2006 – dMarc Broadcasting – Advertising – AdSense
5. October 9, 2006 – YouTube – Video Sharing – YouTube
6. April 13, 2007 – DoubleClick – Online Advertising – AdSense
7. June 3, 2007 – FeedBurner – Web feed – FeedBurner
8. July 9, 2007 – Postini – Communications security – Gmail
9. November 9, 2009 – AdMob – Mobile advertising – Mobile
10. July 1, 2010 – ITA Software – Travel technology – Search
11. August 5, 2010 – Slide.com – Social gaming – Social Networking
12. August 15, 2010 – Like.com – Visual Search Engine – Search

10. Google and its Rivals

It’s obvious that if you start growing you will get many rivals in line. Similarly, after Google has started spreading its wings in many fields other than search engine, they had to face  n-number of rivals.

Here is the list of top 12 big rivals which Google is facing now,

1. Amazon – E-books and Cloud Computing
2. Apple – Smart phones, Online music and Ad-world
3. AT&T – Smart phones
4. Facebook – Social Networking
5. HuLu – Video Streaming
6. IBM – Collaboration tools
7. Microsoft – Search engine, Cloud Computing, browser
8. Nokia – Smart phones
9. Yahoo – Search Engine and email
10. Mozilla – Browser
11. Cisco – collaborative platform, WebEx, and superior VOIP service
12. Twitter – Social Networking and Blogging

11. Chrome – Day before Yesterday

Confused by title? 🙂 It’s obvious! Day before yesterday just means that, Google Chrome was first released on September 2, 2008 and day before yesterday Google Chrome turned 2 years old. Well similar to Google search engine, Chrome browser also showed great improvement in browsers field.

On August, 2009, Google Chrome overtook Apple Inc., Safari browser for a first time to claim third place in worldwide market share. By then Chrome never stopped growing and we never saw the market share coming down as well.

There are many reasons for Chrome to grow like this. Firstly the newly planned strategy to release all new version of Chrome in every six weeks which give Chrome 7 and 8 by this year end. Secondly the ultimate features in Chrome 6 and awesome improvements in upcoming Chrome 7(which is in Build phase now). Thirdly, like Firefox, Google includes of extensions / add-ons for Chrome which are worth trying and increases the productivity.

12. Finally Google!

Finally we reached our goal of 12 points about Google history 🙂 This point is totally dedicated to Google. We saw there are many number of products by Google. But does anyone know how many products Google has produced from its birth? Answer is Google has given 45+ products.

But out of these 45+ products, many products like Google Wave have been shut down by Google due to some reasons. Still Google is got lot of changes in 2010. We saw for a first time Google removed shadow from its logo. Its Android phone new features made people to shift from iPhone. New search button was added, fastest Chrome Browsers, acquired many companies to setup new Social Networking site to compete Facebook.

Well there are lots of things happening in Google Inc., and we can expect more from it.

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Here we end our brief and 12 points of  Google’s life. As we said before we can’t explain whole Google in just a single page and in single article. Maybe even we wont be knowing many things. Still we tried our best to explain.

Please wish our Birthday boy Mr. Search Engine “Google“. Do you think we have to say Google to keep growing? 😛 Share what you feel about Google. Let others also gain more knowledge as Google does 😉