Corporate Information
Google Milestones
Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life. We've captured some of the key milestones in Google's development.
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.
1996
* Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
* BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year -- eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.
1997
* Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google -- a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
1998
August
* Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company called Google Inc.
September
* Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
* Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check.
* Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he's a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.
December
* "PC Magazine" reports that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.







