Today is an important day for both the US-based technology giant Google and us ordinary internet users. This is because Google is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Google, which played an important role in making the Internet what it is today, was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If you went to Google and searched for something today, you may have seen that a Doodle was created on the subject.
Let’s take a time journey with you and see what Google has been through in this 25-year period.
Here is the Doodle prepared for Google’s 25th anniversary
In fact, Google’s real founding date is September 4, 1998. However, the company made a decision in 2005 and accepted September 27 as its official birthday. Since then, every September 27th has been celebrated as Google’s birthday.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were university students at the time, launched Google as a research project. The duo, who initially named the world’s most famous search engine “BackRub”, later changed the term googol, which means 10 to the power of 100, and included it in the search engine as Google. Meanwhile; In fact, there were already different search engines in those years, but the “PageRank” system made Google unique. A search engine now scores a website from 0 to 10 and ranks it according to this score.
The first search on Google was “Stanford University”
As you can guess, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were the first names to use the Google search engine. Knowing that there were a limited number of websites available in those years, the first search engineers made to get an answer was “Stanford University”. The founders of Google, who were students in those years, first searched for their own universities. Meanwhile; The exact day and time of the first Google search in history are not known even today. Engineers cannot remember those years exactly.
Image searches were first enabled in 2001: Thanks to Jennifer Lopez!
Google founders began to examine the searches made on the fledgling search engine. Users who could access the internet in 2020 searched for Jennifer Lopez the most at that time. However, the main reason for these searches was not the famous singer herself, but the outfit she wore at the Grammy Awards. This inspired engineers and Google Images was activated in 2001.
We didn’t just meet Google Images in 2001. What we now see as “You are seeing the results for that query with the spelling corrected” but we all think of it as “Did you mean that?” The correction feature engraved with the phrase was also made available in 2001.
September 11 made a new feature available: Google News.
September 11, one of the biggest terrorist attacks in US history, marked the beginning of a new era for Google. The team started working on Google News and laid the foundations of internet journalism in 2002.
In 2004, we were introduced to Google’s autocomplete feature
Google, which literally “wrote the book of the internet”, has made serious breakthroughs as its popularity has increased. One of them took place in 2004. Autocomplete feature is available for terms searched on Google. Users’ internet and search engine usage experience became easier with this move. While all this was happening, Google’s search volume had already exceeded billions. Of course, internet access increased and Google became the internet itself. Google’s innovative features and habits enabled the company to give way to its competitors.
Years passed, Google announced a new feature every day: In 2006, Google Translate and Google Trends arrived!
Google, which introduced the autocomplete feature to users in 2004, announced Google Translate and Google Trends services just a few years later. At first, Google Translate could only be used between English and Arabic. Nowadays, even local languages can be used within the scope of Google Translate. Google Trends has become vital for many content creators.
Google searches came of age in 2011: We could now search by image
Users who wanted to search on Google began to experience an unprecedented experience in 2011. It was now possible to perform an internet search based on an image. Nowadays this service is overdeveloped. With Google Lens, which was introduced in 2017, you can translate and even instantly purchase a product you are looking for with the image. From where to where…
Artificial intelligence has been in our lives since 2018
Google Search, which has been constantly updated with new features over the years, began to be supported by artificial intelligence in 2018. Google engineers have greatly changed internet searches with the artificial intelligence model they call BERT. Searches made on Google now start showing results according to their context. Nowadays, we have generally come to the end of the road for Google Search. Google Bard will replace Google Search in the coming years…
This is how Google’s logo has changed over the years:
A post about Google’s logo came from company CEO Sundar Pichai. Sharing a post recently, Pichai said, “Happy 25th birthday, Google. Thank you to everyone and all Google employees who use our products and push us to continue innovation!” he said.