Google Through the Years
2014
July
June
May
April
You can now explore historical imagery dating back to 2007 in Google Maps.
February
Working with organization Polar Bears International, we collect Street View imagery of the Canadian tundra, giving you an intimate look at polar bears in their natural habitat.
2013
December
November
October
September
We mark our 15th birthday with a renewed excitement for what's still to come. We continue to look for the next "10x" project that will change the world in ways we can't yet imagine.
Android passes 1 billion device activations—reflecting the work of the entire Android ecosystem and thanks to the enthusiasm of users all around the world.
July
Just months after we preview the new Maps for desktop at Google I/O, we release the updated Google Maps app for smartphones and tablets—part of our redesign of Maps across devices.
Chromecast is a small and affordable device that makes it easy to use your phone, tablet or laptop to bring your favorite online entertainment to your TV screen.
We team up with Starbucks to bring faster, free WiFi connections to all 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the U.S.
June
We unveil our latest Google[x] project: balloon-powered Internet access. We hope Project Loon could become an option for connecting rural, remote and underserved areas, and for crisis response communications.
May
A video doodle for graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass celebrates his classic film credits and posters.
We release imagery of the Earth taken from space over a quarter-century, providing a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time.
We introduce a new Google+ Photos experience that helps your photos look their best, as well as Hangouts, which will be Google’s single communications system, replacing Google Talk, Google+ Hangouts and Messenger.
April
February
In 50 words, tomorrow’s Glass Explorers tell us what they would do if they had Glass. The first Explorers get Glass later in the year.
2012
December
Lady Ada Lovelace, mathematician and writer known to many people as the world’s first computer programmer, gets a doodle.
Psy’s Gangnam Style becomes the most-watched video of all time—the first and only YouTube video to reach 1 billion views.
We launch the Global Impact Awards to support entrepreneurial nonprofits using technology to tackle tough human challenges. We later launch country-specific Global Impact Challenges, starting first in the United Kingdom and then in India.
November
October
July
The world sees the Olympics live on YouTube for the first time. Viewers watched a total of 230 million video streams, and our partnership with NBC makes it the most live-streamed Olympics to date.
June
We unveil DoubleClick Digital Marketing, our new platform that enables seamless ad campaign management for agencies and advertisers.
We introduce Google Now, which brings you the information you need before you even ask—like today's weather or traffic, or your favorite team's score while they’re playing.
We release the first Nexus 7—a powerful 7" tablet designed to bring Google Play content to life and bring you the best of Google in the palm of your hand. Later in the year, the Nexus family expands to include a 10" tablet and the Nexus 4 phone.
May
Hangouts On Air become available worldwide. Many public figures and organizations have hosted Hangouts to connect directly with the public, including U.S. President Barack Obama, NASA, David Beckham, Taylor Swift and U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon.
The Knowledge Graph in Search makes it easier for you to discover information about real-world things—landmarks, celebrities, sports teams, movies and more.
Our doodle in honor of Dr. Robert Moog, the inventor of the electronic analog Synthesizer, is an interactive, playable logo that allows you to record, play back and share songs.
We expand our Transparency Report, providing information on the number of requests we get from copyright owners to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content.
April
Google Drive launches, enabling you to create, share, collaborate and keep your files—including videos, photos, Google Docs and PDFs—all in one place.
March
February
January
We join other sites to encourage users to stand up against two legislative proposals in the U.S. (SOPA and PIPA) which would have censored the Internet and impeded innovation. The next day, the bills are set aside. More than 7 million Internet users sign the petition hosted at google.com/takeaction.
2011
December
November
October
July
June
Our playable doodle in honor of guitar inventor Les Paul becomes the most popular Google doodle of all time. in just 48 hours in the U.S., you recorded 5.1 years worth of music—40 million songs—using our doodle guitar. And those songs were played back 870,000 times!
We install a corporate electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Today it's the largest in the country, with charging at 750+ parking spaces.
We add speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. Simply click the microphone in the Google search box, and you can speak your search.
All our products start getting a design makeover, beginning with our homepage.
May
Google Wallet makes it convenient to shop in-store, online or on the go, and helps merchants simplify the checkout experience.
April
March
February
The Google Art Project lets you virtually tour some of of the world’s best museums and explore high resolution images of tens of thousands of works of art from 40 countries.
2010
December
October
September
August
Priority Inbox helps you handle information overload in Gmail by automatically sorting your email by importance, using a variety of signals.
July
As part of our long-term goal to power our operations with 100% renewable energy, we announce an agreement to purchase the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation in Iowa.
May
As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project.
Google TV is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies.
In celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, we release our first-ever playable doodle, complete with all 256 levels and Ms. PAC-MAN.
April
We change our name to Topeka for April Fools' Day—a tribute to Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google as part of an effort to bring Fiber to that city.
We're the first company to publish the number of requests we get from governments to provide information about our users or to remove content from Google products. Later in 2010, we add visualizations showing disruptions in traffic to our products, such as a government blocking access or a cable being cut.
March
February
The first-ever Google Super Bowl ad tells a love story through search terms. This is one of many videos made to celebrate the human side of search.
January
We introduce the Nexus One to show what's possible on Android devices. The Nexus line of devices has since grown and now includes tablets as well as phones.
In response to the Haiti earthquake, engineers build Person Finder to connect loved ones in the wake of disasters. We've since launched Person Finder for other crises—including the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan—and formed Google Crisis Response, a team that responds to global disasters.
2009
December
October
September
We introduce a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space.
July
May
To 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.
April
Our April Fools' Day prank this year is CADIE, our "Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity" who spends the day taking over various Google products before self-destructing.
March
We release Google Voice, which improves the way you use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription. In 2013, we announce that Voice will be integrated into Google+ Hangouts.
We announce a venture capital fund aimed at supporting promising new technology companies. Google Ventures added its 200th portfolio company in 2013.
We launch a beta test of interest-based advertising on partner sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising lets us show ads more closely related to users' interests, and it gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those most likely to be interested in their products or services.
February
Our first message on Twitter gets back to binary: I'm 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010. (Hint: it's a button on our homepage.)
2008
November
The updated Google Mobile App for iPhone makes it possible for you to do a Google web search using only your voice.
September
August
We launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections. In 2012, we take this effort to the next level with Google.com/elections, providing news and online tools for elections worldwide.
Google Suggest (later called Autocomplete) arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and reducing keystrokes.
July
June
Our first global week of service takes place. Every year, Googlers leave their inboxes behind to participate in projects that give back to the community.
May
March
2007
November
We announce Android—the first open platform for mobile devices—and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance.
September
June
We install solar panels on our Mountain View campus—the largest corporate solar panel installation of its kind at the time. Today the solar panels power 30 percent of the buildings they sit on.
May
Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Today, Street View is available in more than 50 countries.
We kick off an effort to help protect people from malicious content on the Internet. Today, approximately 1 billion people use Google Safe Browsing, which extends not only to Google’s search results and ads, but also to popular web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari, on mobile and desktop.
We expand the YouTube Partnership program to include some of the most popular and prolific original content creators from the YouTube community. Today more than 1 million channels earn revenue from the program.
April
March
The first "gBikes" appear on campus, giving Googlers an efficient, convenient and healthy way to get to and from meetings. Today around 700 bikes are on campus at any given moment—just one sign of Google's cycling-friendly culture.
February
This Valentine's Day doodle causes a stir. Many people think we left out the "l" and linked it to a 17th century poet named Googe; others think it's homage to a band called My Bloody Valentine (the bassist's last name is Googe).
Many of the 2008 Presidential candidates—including then-Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain—visit the Googleplex throughout the campaign.
2006
October
We launch Apps for Education; our first deployment is to Arizona State University. Today Apps for EDU has more than 25 million users, and is being used by 74 of the top 100 universities.
We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets (now called Docs and Sheets). Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).
August
June
May
April
We launch Google Calendar to help you keep track of events, special occasions and appointments, and to share schedules with others.
2005
December
November
We release Google Analytics for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns. Analytics is based on Urchin, a company we acquired in March 2005.
October
August
June
Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
We unveil a satellite imagery-based mapping service that lets you take a virtual journey to any location in the world. Google Earth has since been downloaded more than 1 billion times.
May
Personalized Homepage (later iGoogle and no longer available as of November 2013) was designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules.
April
Google Maps comes to mobile phones in the U.S., offering driving directions and local information to people on the go.
Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users. France, Germany, Italy and Spain follow in 2006. Today, we offer driving directions in 190+ countries around the world.
2004
December
October
We launch Google Scholar in beta. This free service helps people search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
Google SMS launches. This service enabled users to send text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on mobile devices.
We 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.
August
Our IPO of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street. Opening price: $85 per share.
May
April
We launch Gmail on April Fools' Day. At first invite-only, today it boasts more than 425 million users. Fun fact: our internal code name for Gmail was "Caribou," inspired by a Dilbert cartoon.
March
We move to the new "Googleplex" at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View with 800+ employees.
We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Eventually, Local is combined with Google Maps.)
2003
December
October
April
March
2002
October
September
May
We release Labs, which let people try out beta technologies and was the proving ground for many Google features, such as Google Transit, Google Scholar and Google Trends. Nearly 10 years later, we wind down Google Labs in order to prioritize our product efforts.
April
2001
December
August
April
2000
December
October
Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.
September
Google New York starts in a Starbucks on 86th Street with a one-person sales "team." Today, more than 4,000 Googlers work in our New York office, a former Port Authority building at 111 Eighth Avenue.
May
We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).
This little alien decorates our first series of doodles—and is the first doodle not associated with any particular event.
1999
November
We hire our first chef, Charlie Ayers (his previous claim to fame was catering for the Grateful Dead; he now owns a cafe in Palo Alto). Today Google's food programs focus on providing healthy, sustainably sourced food to fuel Googlers around the world.
August
We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.
June
May
Omid Kordestani joins to run sales—employee #11. Ten years later, Omid steps down from his active role in the company, becoming a senior advisor.
April
February
We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., starting with just eight employees.
1998
December
September
Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage on Santa Margarita Ave., Menlo Park, Calif.
Larry and Sergey hire their first employee. Craig Silverstein is a fellow CS grad student at Stanford who works at Google for 10+ years before joining education startup Khan Academy.
On September 4, Google files for incorporation in California. Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check.
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.
April
Early years
Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford in 1995. Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.
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