Larry Page and Sergey Brin accept a $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim and incorporate Google Inc. on Sept. 7. The Stanford University graduate students work from a suburban garage (pictured right) in Menlo Park, Calif., for six months.
Did you know? Google hosted its first data center in a rented 7' x 8' room.
Employees: Less than 10
AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and Yahoo dominate Internet search, but Google scores $25 million in its first round of venture capital funding, which values the startup at $100 million. Google moves out of its garage to an office building in nearby downtown Palo Alto.
Did you know? Google's original logo ended with an exclamation point.
Employees: Less than 50
Google indexes more than a billion Web pages to become the world's largest search engine. In June, Yahoo inks a deal for Google to supply its search results for four years - a fateful move for Yahoo, which waits until 2002 before investing big on its own search technology. In October, Google launches AdWords, which sells text-based ads next to search results.
Did you know? Google makes its first foray into mobile by putting its search engine on Palm handhelds.
Employees: Less than 150
Eric Schmidt replaces co-founder Larry Page as chief executive in August. Schmidt spent four years as CEO of software maker Novell before joining Google; before that he was the chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. The company turns a profit for the first time.
Did you know? Google launches its 'Did you mean?' spell-checker.
Annual revenue: $86.4 million
Profits: $6.99 million
Employees: About 250
Google thrives even as the bursting of the dotcom bubble devastates scores of Internet companies. AOL Time Warner COO Bob Pittman (right) calls Google "the reigning champ of online search" as AOL abandons Overture search technology for Google's. A new version of AdWords, which will prove to be a multibillion-dollar jackpot, lets advertisers bid on keywords to determine where their ads appear on search result pages.
Did you know? Yahoo drops the Google search logo from its homepage.
Annual revenue: $439 million
Profits: $99 million
Revenue growth: 409%
Employees: About 500
Capitalizing on the success of AdWords, Google introduces AdSense in June to deliver ads to third-party sites. While Googlers celebrate AdSense (right), rumors of an IPO heat up and analysts estimate that Google is worth up to $25 billion.
Did you know? Microsoft, desperate to get in the search game, briefly considers an offer to buy Google.
Annual revenue: $1.47 billion
Profits: $106 million
Revenue growth: 234%
Employees: About 1,300
n the most hotly-anticipated tech IPO since Netscape, Google goes public on Aug. 19 at $85 a share. By the end of the year, Google's stock spikes to $195. The company launches its hugely popular Gmail message service. Orkut, a social-networking site, also debuts but fails to gain much traction, much like the Froogle comparison shopping site before it.
Did you know? CEO Eric Schmidt mandates that meetings start seven minutes after the hour because that's the way some college classes are run.
Annual revenue: $3.19 billion
Profits: $399 million
Revenue growth: 118%
Employees: 3,021
As Google grows, so does its rivalry with Microsoft and Yahoo. Google introduces personalized homepages that compete directly with Yahoo and MSN. Google also spars with the software giant in court over the hiring of a former Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee (right), to run Google's China operations (the case settled and Lee stayed at Google).
Did you know? One quarter of Googlers work outside the United States.
Annual revenue: $6.14 billion
Profits: $1.47 billion
Revenue growth: 92.5%
Employees: 5,680
Looking to expand its search-advertising platform, Google shells out $1.65 billion for its largest acquisition to date: YouTube, an 18-month old video-sharing site founded by Steven Chen (near right) and Chad Hurley (far right). The search king also strikes a three-year, $900 million deal to run text-based ads on MySpace, a social networking site owned by News Corp.
Did you know? Google is added as a verb in the Oxford English and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Annual revenue: $10.6 billion
Profits: $3.08 billion
Revenue growth:: 72.8%
Employees: 10,674
Google tops Fortune's Best Company to Work For rankings, thanks to fabulous perks and a stock that hits an all-time high of $741 in November. Even so, an exodus of top Googlers picks up as Gokul Rajaram, one of two senior AdSense execs, leaves to start his own company. Several star Googlers have since decamped to Facebook, including former AdWords sales chief Sheryl Sandberg.
Did you know? Google changes its privacy policy to make users' search data anonymous after 18 months.
Annual revenue: $16.6 billion
Profits: $4.2 billion
Revenue growth: 56.5%
Employees: 16,805
Google goes after Microsoft on multiple fronts. The search giant completes its $3.1 billion acquisition of ad server DoubleClick, a company that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (right) wanted. Google also strikes a search partnership with Yahoo, which Microsoft also wanted. In September, Google, its shares down 40% from their all-time high in 2007, takes on Microsoft's Internet Explorer with its own Web browser, Chrome. Google also prepares to launch its Android mobile operating system to compete with the Apple iPhone and Microsoft's Mobile OS. Did you know? Google's 2008 international revenues are on track to exceed domestic sales for the first time.
Revenue: $10.6 billion (first half of 2008)
Profits: $2.56 billion (first half of 2008)
Revenue growth: 39% (full-year estimate by Thomson Financial)
Employees: 19,604 (as of June 30)
