The Daily Gamecock

Celebrating 18 years of Google as a search engine

Get the candles ready because today is Google’s birthday. 18 years ago, Google began its journey to becoming the industry giant that it is today. 

Google forever changed the landscape of the Internet through its search engine. Students, professionals and everyday people have benefited from the ingenuity of Google. For millennials, it’s hard to picture a time without Google, but it was only founded back in 1995. 

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, met at Stanford University and collaborated to make an early search engine called BackRub. In 1997, they registered the domain name of Google and the rest is history. In 1999, they only had 11 employees, but later that year, they received 25 million dollars in investment.

Google’s lighthearted side has been intrinsic to the company since the beginning. In May of 2000, Google started its annual April 1 tradition of fooling around with headlines. Also, in April of 2001, it began offering joke languages such as “Swedish Chef” and “Klingon.” 

By 2004, Google came out with Gmail and since then has continued to innovate. What started as a search engine has expanded to file-sharing platforms, social media such as YouTube and Google Plus, and recently, the virtual reality field.

Google last confirmed its search query statistics in 2012. At that time, they were processing 38,000 searches per second, or 3 billion searches a day. 

Apart from its web achievements, Google also strives to reach out to the larger community and use its influence to better society. Google Education has increased efficiency for classrooms and educators through a bundle of partner apps including Classroom, Docs and cloud sharing. The Google Chromebook, Google’s laptop, is cheaper than competitors and allows students to utilize technology to stay ahead of the curve. 

Recently, Google became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a collection of companies that would slim down Google and make its overall management better. Alphabet is the parent company of everything from Google to Calico, a longevity research company. 

Google has constantly innovated to the point in which we are inundated with its environment. Even in pop culture, we are obsessed with the company. The movie “The Internship” centers on the insane demand to work for Google and their hip environment. 

On top of that, we use Google to go about our lives. For many people, Google is the search engine of choice. We use it to do everything from apply for jobs to spending our free time surfing the web.

Currently, Google is looking to push the limits through providing Internet through Project Loon, which uses balloons to promote more accessible internet.  Also, Google’s self-driving car has been widely publicized.

Google turning 18 is a turning point for the company. Much like a teenager, it is moving into its “adulthood." In their youth, they have already changed the world, but with new ideas coming through the secret research department and its commitment to bettering the world, Google will only continue to add to its resume.


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