The AFP has clearly been waiting for September 15, so it could trot outtoday’s “Google is 10 years old” story. But the company itself doesn’t counttomorrow as its 10th birthday. In fact, knowing exactly when Google’s birthdayis depends on your point of view. Some milestones to consider below, which makeGoogle as old as 12 and as young as 9. Plus, more special Google birthday logos.
NOTE: See Google 10th Birthday Site: Interactive Timeline, Project 10×100 To Improve The World & Share Your Google Stories for news of the official Google 10th birthday site launched since this was written.
Google The 12 Year Old:January 1996
This is whenGoogle cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on BackRub, whatlater become Google. Use this month, and Google is 12 years old.
Google The 10 Year Old: Sept. 15, 1997
This is when, as the AFP reports, Google registered google.com.
Google The 9 Year Old:Sept. 7, 1998
This is when Google may have officially incorporated.
Google The 9 Year Old: Sept. 27, 1998 (Current Official Date)
Back in 2005, Google declared that Sept. 27 was its birthday. Butwait — what happened with that Sept. 7 date? Well, in 2005, Yahoo came alongand freaked Google out by announcing an index that was larger than Google’s. Ithad been ages since anyone did that. Quite a debate ensued, and I did a longwrite-up about it then.
Things got resolved by Google doing some PR. Theyannounced that for their “birthday,” they’d gotten bigger — but were alsodropping the count of pages from the home page, which helped (thankfully) defuse
the size wars that often meant nothing about search quality.
It’s Their Party, They’ll Party When They Want To!
So there you have it — Google’s birthday is whenever it wants to be. Indeed,back in 2006, theWhen isGoogle’s birthday? page in Google help was changed to say:
Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrateour birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feellike having cake. For more on Google’s history: https://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
Previously, it had said:
Google’s official birthday is September 7, 1998. If Google were a person, itwould have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), andtoday it would have just finished the first grade. In other words, we’re justgetting started. To discover more about Google’s history, please visit https://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html.To learn about our mission, please see https://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/index.html
Google Birthday Logos
How about those special birthdaylogos? Google’s beenputting them up consistently since 2002. The first year, it happened onSeptember 27, then shifted to September 7, then back to September 27 from 2005
onward. I’d expect to see a special ninth birthday logo showing up on the 27thof this month.
4th Birthday: 2002
Celebrated onSeptember 27th, 2002.
5th Birthday: 2003
Celebrated onSeptember 7th, 2003.
6th Birthday: 2004
Celebrated onSeptember 7th, 2004.
7th Birthday: 2005
Celebrated onSeptember 27th, 2005.
8th Birthday: 2006
Celebrated onSeptember 27th, 2006.
Postscript: Google Birthday Logo: Nine Years Old covers how, as predicted, Google put up a special nine years old logo. Here it is:
Postscript: Both the 10th and 11th birthdays were celebrated on the 27th:
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