1995-1997
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 ... See Moreservers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.1997Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google—aplay on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the numberrepresented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the termreflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount ofinformation on the web.1998AugustSun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn‘t exist yet: a company called Google Inc.SeptemberGoogle 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 thenewly-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” reportsthat Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevantresults” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top100 Web Sites for 1998.1999FebruaryWe outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees.AprilYoshka, our first “company” dog, comes to work with our senior vice president of operations, Urs Hoelzle.MayOmid Kordestani joins to run sales—the first non-engineering hire.JuneOur first press releaseannounces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins;John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritzdescribing “Googlers” as ”people who use Google”.AugustWe move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore.Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north ofthe older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.NovemberCharlie Ayersjoins as Google’s first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged bythe company‘s 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for theGrateful Dead.2000AprilOn April Fool‘s Day, we announce the MentalPlex:Google‘s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search resultsyou want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley traditionof April 1 hoaxes.MayThe first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).JuneWe forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine.SeptemberWe start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.OctoberGoogle AdWords launcheswith 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises onlineactivation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performancefeedback.DecemberGoogle Toolbar is released. It’s a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.2001JanuaryWe announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.FebruaryOur first public acquisition: Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service,an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. Weadd search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.MarchEric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.Google.com is available in 26 languages.AprilSwedish Chef becomes a language preference.JulyImage Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.AugustWe open our first international office, in Tokyo.Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.OctoberA new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.DecemberKeeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.2002FebruaryKlingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.AprilFor April Fool‘s Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2billion web documents and program in their favorite environment,including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.MayWe announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.We release Google Labs, a place to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.SeptemberGoogle News launches with 4000 news sources.OctoberWe open our first Australian office in Sydney.DecemberYou can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).2003JanuaryAmerican Dialect Society members vote “google” the “most useful” Word of the Year for 2002.FebruaryWe acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.MarchWe announce a new content-targeted advertising service,enabling publishers large and small to access Google‘s vast network ofadvertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquire Applied Semantics,whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)AprilWe launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.OctoberRegistration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.DecemberWe launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.2004Januaryorkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.FebruaryLarry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.MarchWe move to our new “Googleplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard asgeneral manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business.We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)AprilFor April Fools we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.MayWe announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship,awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today thesescholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia andEurope.AugustOur Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.SeptemberThere are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.OctoberWe formally open our office in Dublin,Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry,and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device.Larry and Sergey are named Fellowsby the Marconi Society, which recognizes “lasting scientificcontributions to human progress in the field of communications scienceand the Internet.”We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.Google Desktop Search is introduced: You can now search for files and documents stored on your hard drive using Google technology.We launch the beta version of Google Scholar,a free service for searching scholarly literature such as peer-reviewedpapers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.NovemberOur index of web pages reaches 8 billion.DecemberWe open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center toattract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan and Oxford as well as the New York Public Library.2005FebruaryWe hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.Google Maps goes live.MarchWe launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.AprilOur first Google Maps release in Europe is for the U.K.For April Fool‘s, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.My Search History launches in Labs, allowing you to view all the web pages you‘ve visited and Google searches you‘ve made over time.We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.MayWe release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: Searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.JuneWe hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.AugustGoogle scores well in the U.S. government‘s 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We‘ve done so in subsequent years as well.)We launch Google Talk,a downloadable Windows application that enables you to talk or IM withfriends quickly and easily, as well as talk using a computer microphoneand speaker (no phone required) for free.SeptemberOverlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastationwrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.Google Blog Search goes live; it‘s the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.OctoberFeed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book eventwith Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.” Sincethen, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.NovemberWe release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.DecemberGoogle Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site.Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.2006JanuaryOur first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner, graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants.We announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China.We introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.FebruaryWe release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools from Google Talk.Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm.Google News for mobile launches.MarchWe announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.AprilFor April Fool‘s we unveil a new product, Google Romance: “Dating is a search problem.”We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.MayWe release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.JuneWe announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing your to upload and share your photos online.The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds “Google” as a verb.We announce Google Checkout, a fast and easy way to pay for online purchases.Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.JulyAt Google Code Jam Europe,nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublinfor the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.AugustWe launch free citywide WiFi in Mountain View.More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project.Star Trek‘s 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use.Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including including Gmail and Calendar, is released.Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.SeptemberWe add an archive search to Google News, with more than 200 years of historical articles.Featured Content for Google Earthincludes overlays from the UN Environmental Program, DiscoveryNetworks, the Jane Goodall Institute and the National Park Service.The University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.OctoberTogether with LitCam and UNESCO‘s Institute for Lifelong Learning, we launch the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion.We announce our acquisition of YouTube.We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).Google Custom Search Engine launches, giving bloggers and website owners the ability to create a search engine tailored to their own interests.We acquire JotSpot, a collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.NovemberThe first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contestin the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen tohave her doodle displayed on There have been Doodle 4Google contests in several other years and countries since.DecemberWe release Patent Search in the U.S., indexing more than 7 million patents dating back to 1790.2007JanuaryWe announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world‘s largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.FebruaryWe release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability.Google Docs & Spreadsheets is availablein eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, TraditionalChinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese(Brazil) and Russian.For Valentine‘s Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only.)Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the U.S.MarchOur first Latin American software coding contestends with Fábio Dias Moreira of Brazil taking the grand prize. Hescored more points than 5,000 other programmers from all over thecontinent.We sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.AprilThis April Fool‘s Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider)—we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office!We add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.MayIn partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and GovernorJennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords supportsite.At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.JuneGoogle Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K.We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company‘s on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.We unveil several “green” initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell and more than 30 other companies.Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.JulyWe announce the acquisition of Postini.The first CNN/YouTube debate takes place between the eight U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates. (The Republicans get their turn in November 2007.)Google Finance becomes available for non-U.S. markets for the first time, in Canada.Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.AugustWe ask your for you interpretation of how Gmail travels around the world, and receive more than 1,100 video responses from more than 65 different countries.To infinity and beyond! Sky launches inside Google Earth, including layers for constellation information and virtual tours of galaxies.SeptemberAdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites.Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.OctoberWe partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.NovemberWe announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.Google.org announces RE<C,an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sourcesthat are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solarthermal power and wind power technologies.DecemberThe Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.2008JanuaryGoogle.org announces five key initiatives:in addition to the previously-announced RE<C and RechargeIT, thereis a new dedication to solutions that can predict and prevent crisesworldwide, improve public services and fuel the growth of smallenterprises.We bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless world becomes available to consumers.FebruaryFor people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables you to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents and calendars.MarchWe finally complete the acquisition deal for DoubleClick.Together with Yahoo and MySpace, we announce the OpenSocial Foundation,an independent non-profit group designed to provide transparency andoperational guidelines around the open software tools for socialcomputing.AprilWe feature 16 April Fool‘s jokes from our offices around the world,including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China) and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are “Rickrolled.”A new version of Google Earthlaunches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the sametime, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expandingfrom an AdWords-only product. It‘s a free website-testing tool withwhich site owners can continually test different combinations of theirwebsite content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield themost sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.We launch Google Finance Chinaallowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as aresult of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes(“skins”) for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers asDale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.MayFollowing both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect,a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easilymake their sites social by adding registration, invitations, membersgallery, message posting and reviews, plus applications built by theOpenSocial developer community.With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6,a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billionnetworks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent ofbroad and immediate adoption of IPv6.Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.We release Google Healthto the public, allowing people to safely and securely collect, storeand manage their medical records and health information online.We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle “Up In The Clouds.”JuneReal-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.With the launch of Google Site Search, site owners can enable Google-powered searches on their own websites.We launch Gmail Labs, a set of experimental Gmail features, including saved searches and different kinds of stars, which let you customize your Gmail experience.A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.JulyWe provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France route—the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe.Our first downloadable iPhone app, featuring My Location and word suggestions for quicker mobile searching, debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone.We work with the band Radiohead to make a music video of their song “House of Cards,” using only data, and not cameras.Our indexing system for processing links indicates that we now count 1 trillion unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day).AugustStreet View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia—the first time it‘s appeared outside of North America or Europe.Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and reduce keystrokes.Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.SeptemberWord gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing you to ”name tag” people in photos.Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.T-Mobile announces the G1,the first phone built on the Android operating system. At the sametime, we release a new Android Software Developer Kit, and the OpenHandset Alliance announces its intention to open source the entireAndroid platform by the end of 2008. The G1 becomes available forpurchase in October.We launch Transitfor the New York metro region, making public transit information easilyavailable for users of the largest transportation agency in the U.S.Thanks to all of you, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.OctoberWe release the first draft of Clean Energy 2030,a proposal to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity use andto reduce oil use by cars 40 percent by 2030. The plan could generatebillions in savings as well as millions of “green jobs.”We introduce Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch, complete with photos, geo-located Wikipedia articles and the ability to tilt your phone to view 3D terrain.Googlers in Mountain View build a zip line to travel across the small Permanente Creek separating a few of our buildings.NovemberIn a vote by 5-0, the FCC formally agrees to open up “white spaces,”or unused television spectrum, for wireless broadband service. We seethis decision as a clear victory for Internet users and anyone whowants good wireless communications.After we discover a correlation between certain search queries and CDC data on flu symptoms, we release Google Flu Trends, an indicator of flu activity around the U.S. as much as two weeks earlier than traditional flu surveillance systems.We announce the availability of the LIFE photo archive in Google Image Search. Only a fraction of the approximately 10 million photos have ever been seen before.SearchWiki launches,a way for you to customize your own search experience by re-ranking,deleting, adding and commenting on search results. Comments can also beread by other users.DecemberWe invite musicians around the globe to audition to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world‘s first collaborative online orchestra.Google Friend Connect is available to any webmaster looking to easily integrate social features into their site.Street View coverage more than doublesin the United States, including several states never before seen onStreet View (Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota).We partner with publishers to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.2009JanuaryWe kick off January with the launch of Picasa for Mac at Macworld.The Vatican launches a YouTube Channel, providing updates from the Pope and Catholic Church.Together with the New America Foundation‘s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers, we announce Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that provides tools to test broadband connections.FebruaryThe latest version of Google Earth makes a splash with Ocean, a new feature that provides a 3D look at the ocean floor and information about one of the world‘s greatest natural resources.We introduce Google Latitude,a Google Maps for mobile feature and an iGoogle gadget that lets youshare your location with friends and see the approximate location ofpeople who have decided to share their location with you.After adding Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese and Galician, Google Translate is capable of automatic translation between 41 languages, covering 98 percent of the languages read by Internet users.Our first message on Twittergets back to binary: I‘m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 0110100101101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 0111100100001010. (Hint: it‘s a button on our homepage.)MarchWe launch a beta test of interest-based advertisingon partner sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising letsus show ads more closely related to what people are searching for, andit gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those who are mostinterested in their products or services.We release Google Voiceto existing Grand Central users. The new application improves the wayyou use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription andarchive and search of all of your SMS text messages.We celebrate our San Francisco office‘s Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council‘s LEED(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building RatingSystem. We see it as a sign that we‘re on track with our approach tobuilding environmentally friendly offices.The White House holds an online town hall to answer citizens‘ questions submitted on Google Moderator.We launch new iGoogle backdrops inspired by video games, including classics like “Mario,” “Zelda” and “Donkey Kong.”We announce Google Ventures: a venture capital fund aimed at using our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies.Using our transliteration technology, we build and release a feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type messages in Indian languages like Hindi or Malayalam.Google Suggest goes local with keyword suggestions for 51 languages in 155 domains.AprilOur April Fool‘s Day prank this year is CADIE,our “Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity” whospends the day taking over various Google products beforeself-destructing.We announce an update to search which enables people to get localized results even if they don‘t include a location in their search query.For India‘s 15th general election, we launch the Google India Elections Centre,where people can check to see if they‘re registered to vote, find theirpolling place, as well as read news and other information.Over 90 musicians from around the world—including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player—perform in the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.We rebuild and redesign Google Labs as well as release two new Labs: Similar Image search and Google News Timeline. Later in the month, we introduce Toolbar Labs.We begin to show Google profile resultsat the bottom of U.S. search pages when people search for names, givingpeople more control over what others find about them when they searchon Google.We release 11 short films about Google Chromemade by Christoph Niemann, Motion Theory, Steve Mottershead, Go Robot,Open, Default Office, Hunter Gatherer, Lifelong Friendship Society,SuperFad, Jeff&Paul and Pantograph.MayTo clear brush and reduce fire hazard in the fields near our Mountain View headquarters, we rent some goats from a local company. They help us trim the grass the low-carbon way!At our second Searchology event, we introduce a few new search features, including the Search Options panel and rich snippets in search results.We launch Sky Map for Android, which uses your Android phone to help you identify stars, constellations and planets.Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, wins the second U.S. Doodle 4 Google competition with her doodle “A new beginning.”At our second annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, we preview Google Wave, a new communication and collaboration tool.JuneWe add a new dashboard to Google Placeswhich gives business owners information, such as what people searchedfor to see their listing or how many times their listing appeared insearch results, about how customers find their businesses in GoogleMaps.We introduce two new ways to customize your iGoogle page: the iGoogle Showcase, which lets you see your favorite celebrities‘ homepages look like and add gadgets and more from those pages to your own, and nature themes.Google Squared, a new experiment in Labsintended for certain kinds of complex search queries, collects factsfrom the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to aspreadsheet.The Google Translator Toolkit is a new set of editing toolsthat helps people translate and publish work in other languages fasterand at a higher quality. Our automatic translation system also learnsfrom any corrections.We announce All for Good.It‘s a single search interface for volunteer activities across manymajor volunteering sites and organizations that‘s developed using AppEngine and Google Base. Many Googlers contributed to the open sourceproject in their 20 percent time.We release a beta version of AdSense for Mobile Applications, which allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in iPhone and Android applications.Google SMSis a suite of mobile applications that allows people in Africa toaccess information—like health and agriculture tips, news and localweather—using SMS on their mobile phones, and includes a marketplaceapplication for finding buyers and sellers of goods.JulyBoth the enterprise and consumer versions of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are now out of beta.We announce that we‘re developing the Google Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system initially targeted at netbooks.We launch Moon in Google Earth on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.The tool features lunar imagery, information about the Apollo landingsites, panoramic images shot by the Apollo astronauts and narratedtours.The new comics themes for iGoogle range from classic strips like Peanuts to heroes like Batman to alternative comics from all over the world.We add a search options panel to Google Images, making it easier to find the types of images you need.AugustAny active U.S. service member is invited to sign up for a Google Voice account, to help them keep in better touch with family and friends, especially when deployed abroad.We announce a deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a high-quality video compression technology company.New social features come to iGoogle, including social gaming, media-sharing and to-do list gadgets as well as an update feed for friends‘ activities.Google Insights for Search is now available in 39 languages around the world. While we‘re at it, we introduce a forecasting feature and an animated map.We expand the YouTube Partnership Programto include individual popular videos, so you can monetize your viralvideo and earn revenue even if you aren‘t a member of the PartnershipProgram.We add Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish to Google Translate, bringing the total number of supported languages to 51—that‘s 2,550 language pairs!SeptemberWe celebrate the birthdayof a product nearly as old as Google itself: Blogger. More than 300million people visit the blogging site every month, and we‘re proudthat it continues to be a medium for people around the world to freelyexpress themselves.The search box on our classic homepage gets bigger.FastFlip, an experiment in Google Labs, lets you quickly browsethrough recent news, headlines and popular topics like a printmagazine, while at the same time offering some of the benefits ofonline news, like aggregation and search over many top publications,personalization and the ability to share content with your friends.We acquire reCAPTCHA, a technology company focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the process that converts scanned images into plain text.In an effort to create a more open display advertising ecosystem for everyone, we introduce the DoubleClick Ad Exchange,a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side;and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell displayadvertising space.On the birthday of the “father of science fiction,” we unveil the truth behind a mysterious series of doodles in tribute to H.G. Wells.We introduce Place Pages to Google Maps:one page that organizes all the relevant information about a business,point of interest, transit station, neighborhood, landmark or city—inany part of the world—in one place. Place Pages include rich details,like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews andrelated websites.OctoberWe begin a series of posts on the Official Google Blog dedicated to the latest and greatest in the world of Google search.Flu Trends, our flu surveillance tool, is now available in 16 additional countries and in 37 languages.We introduce BuildingMaker,a tool for creating buildings for Google Earth that lets you constructa model of a building using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes.We announce an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.Social Search,a new experiment on Google Labs, helps you find relevant public contentfrom your friends and contacts right in your Google search results.Google Maps Navigation,our turn-by-turn GPS navigation system, includes 3D views and voiceguidance—and because it‘s connected to the Google cloud, it alwaysincludes the newest map data, lets you search by voice or along aroute, and provides live traffic data.A new search feature helps you find music informationon the web. When you enter the name of a song, artist or album, or evena snippet of lyrics, your search results will include links to an audiopreview of those songs provided by our music search partners.NovemberThe Google Dashboard provides you with greater transparency and control over the data associated with your Google Account.A new series on the Official Google Blog covers what’s new in Google Apps.We add full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts to Google Scholar. We think this addition will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.An experimental feature in Labs called Image Swirl builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.By combining automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system, we offer automatic captions in YouTube.Captions can help the deaf and hearing impaired, enable people aroundthe world to access video content through machine translation, improvesearch and enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videosthey‘re looking for.A few months after announcing our open source operating system project, we open-source the project as Chromium OS in order to engage with partners, the open source community and developers.DecemberA new homepage designshows only our logo, the search box and the buttons upon first loading,and reveals other links on the homepage, such as Gmail or Image Search,when the user moves the mouse.Google Public DNSis part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster. A DNS resolverconverts easy-to-remember domain names into unique Internet Protocol(IP) numbers so that computers can communicate with one another.With our new real-time search feature,you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, aswell as news headlines and blog posts published just seconds beforeyour search—right on the search results page.Just in time for the holidays, we roll out Mac and Linux versions of Google Chrome, as well as extensions for Chrome in Windows and Linux (all in beta).Living Stories, developed in partnership with The New York Times and The Washington Post, is an experimental format prototype for presenting online news. (We ended this experiment in February 2010, and open-sourced the code for anyone to use.)We introduce a few new features to Google Toolbar, including an easy way to share any page on the web, shortened by a new URL shortener (goo.gl).For the first time, YouTube reveals official Most-Watched lists and some of its fastest-rising search terms for the past year.2010JanuaryWe introduce Nexus One,an exemplar of what‘s possible on mobile devices through Android, aswell as a Google-hosted web store aimed at providing people with aneasier way to buy a mobile phone.Now, you can upload all file types, including large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and more to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online.We state our new approachto business in China: Google will no longer censor search results onGoogle.cn, and we will work to determine how we might operate anunfiltered search engine within the law, if possible.On International Data Privacy Day, we publish our privacy principles. We‘ve always operated under these principles, but now codify them to share our thinking as we create new technologies.FebruaryThe first-ever Google Super Bowl ad tells a love story through search terms. This is one of many videos made to celebrate the human quests behind search.In time for the Winter Games in Vancouver, we introduce Street View imagery of Whistler Blackcomb Mountains, gathered with a special camera-equipped snowmobile.Google Buzz is a new wayto start conversations about things you find interesting—like photos,videos, webpages or whatever might be on your mind—built into Gmail andfor mobile.We introduce Safety Mode in YouTube,an opt-in setting to help screen out potentially objectionable contentthat you may prefer not to see or don‘t want others in your family tostumble across while enjoying YouTube.We announce a plan to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks,delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what mostAmericans have access to today, in a small number of trial locationsacross the United States.We acquire Aardvark,a company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge andexperience of your friends and extended network of contacts.The next generation of ad-serving technology for online publishers, DoubleClick for Publishers and DFP Small Business, combines Google‘s technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick‘s display advertising and ad serving experience.MarchWe acquire Picnik, a site enabling you to edit your photos in the cloud, without leaving your browser.Stars in search is a new feature that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content.The Google Apps Marketplace is a new online storefor integrated business applications that allows Google Apps customersto easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integratewith Google Apps.Bike directions and bike trail data come to Google Maps.Following the January announcement about search in China, we stop censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News and Google Images—on Google.cn, instead redirecting users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk.AprilFor April Fool‘s Day, we change our name to Topeka. The change is a tribute to Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google as part of an effort to bring our experimental fiber network to that city.Scientists announce a significant new hominid fossil discovery, made with help from Google Earth, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.New features for real-time search include the ability to search the archive of public tweets and “replay” the conversation from a particular moment in time, as well as a tool called Google Follow Finder that helps you find new people to follow.Google Places(formerly the Local Business Center) gets a new name along with somenew features, like showing service areas and, in some cities, theability to use an easy advertising program called Tags.We launch a Government Requests toolto give people information about the requests for user data or contentremoval we receive from government agencies around the world.With Earth view in Google Maps, you can explore Google Earth’s detailed 3D imagery and terrain directly in Google Maps, on your browser.Oregon becomes the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state.MayAs part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project.In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we provide Google Earth imagery of the spill’s spread.We roll out a refreshed lookfor our search results, with a new, contextual left-hand panel thathighlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for yourquery.A team of Googlers in London create a photomosaic of the Google logo. (Later, this project becomes the inspiration for a company contest.)At Google I/O, we announce Google TV,which is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast wayto navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies.We’re busy at I/O this year, with a handful of other announcements and updates.In celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, we release our first-ever playable doodle, complete with all 256 levels and Ms. PAC-MAN. It’s so popular we soon give it a permanent home.You have the option to search more securely with SSL-encrypted Google web search.We release a reporton our economic impact in the United States: in 2009, we generated atotal of $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses,website publishers and non-profits.The 2010 Doodle 4 Google winner in the U.S. is third grader Mackenzie Melton, for her doodle “Rainforest Habitat.”We officially acquire AdMob, a mobile display advertising company.JuneYou can now personalize your Google.com with a background image.With help from the Marin Bee Company, we install the Hiveplex—four bee hives painted in Google’s colors, situated in a flowered area on our campus. We have our first honey harvest later in the year.We collaborate with the Guggenheim Museum on a global online initiative, called YouTube Play: A Biennal of Creative Video, to discover the most creative video in the world.We catch football fever, offering ways for fans to stay on top of the 2010 World Cup as well as a lot of thorough analysis of soccer search trends.Caffeine,our new indexing system, provides 50 percent fresher results for websearches than our last index, and is the largest collection of webcontent we‘ve offered.Google Voice is now available to anyone in the U.S.We stop redirecting Chinese usersfrom Google.cn to Google.com.hk. Instead, we provide a landing pagewhere users can use Google.cn services that we can provide withoutfiltering, and/or click through to Google.com.hk for search.The Google News homepage is redesigned to make your view of news more relevant and easier for you to share interesting stories.JulyWe sign an agreement to acquire ITA, a software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.“Life in a Day” is a cinematic experiment to document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.We acquire Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world.We announce an agreementto purchase the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation atthe NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa.Google Images gets a new look, designed to make it easier for you to take advantage of some of the powerful technology behind Images.Google Apps for Government, our newest editionof Google Apps, includes the same Google applications offered tobusinesses and everyday users, with specific measures to address thepolicy and security needs of the public sector.AugustWe will not continue to develop Google Wave as a standalone product.We acquire Slide,a social technology company with an extensive history of building newways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.With Verizon, we announce a joint policy proposal for an open Internet.Voice Actions for Android are a series of voice commands that let you control your phone just by speaking.If you’re in the U.S., you can now call any phone directly from Gmail.Realtime Search gets a new standalone homepage, along with more tools for exploring and refining real-time results.“The Wilderness Downtown” is a musical experience created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google, built with Google Chrome in mind using HTML5 and other technologies.Priority Inbox,an experimental way of handling information overload in Gmail,automatically sorts your email by importance, using a variety ofsignals.SeptemberWe celebrate Google Chrome’s second birthday with a new release of the browser that’s three times faster than the original beta.Google Instant predicts what you’re interested in and shows you search results as you type so you can quickly get to the information you’re looking for.Our new Family Safety Center is a one-stop shop with info for parents and teachers on how to keep kids safe online.A new online Transparency Report gives people tools to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked.Google News turns eight.We announce the five winners of Project 10^100.We celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Flintstones” with a Google doodle.Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica imagery comes to Street View. Now,three years after we first launched Street View in five U.S. cities,you can explore all seven continents at eye level!
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