Google is celebrating its 25th anniversary! It’s been a quarter of a century since the Mountain View company launched its search engine, laying the foundation for a whole range of innovations and services that are deeply embedded in our daily lives. Let’s review some important dates in the development of this web empire.
Google will celebrate its 25th anniversary in September 2023 // Source: Google
Every year on September 27th, Google celebrates its birthday (although there is no evidence that this is the exact founding date). However, this year is very special because it is the 25th anniversary. A quarter century! Tremendous longevity for a company that we shouldn’t see disappearing from the digital landscape so quickly. And for good reason, we must recognize that the company has established itself as an indestructible giant, even if there are countless ways to criticize or even make fun of certain strategies of this web giant.
To achieve this, Google had to evolve and innovate. Starting with a search engine that showed blue clickable links, the company then moved on to Google Images, Chrome, Android, YouTube, Maps, Assistant, Photos, etc. Lately we have also seen all the multinational company’s efforts in the field of artificial intelligence, especially Google Bard, which is progressing slowly but surely. An AI is also explicitly in the spotlight in the video below.
YouTube Link Subscribe to Frandroid
This content is blocked because you have not accepted cookies and other trackers. This content is provided by YouTube.
To view it, you must agree to YouTube’s use of your data, which may be used for the following purposes: enabling the display and sharing of content on social media, promoting the development and improvement of products from Humanoid and Co partners, show you personalized advertising related to your profile and activity, define a personalized advertising profile, measure the performance of advertising and content on this website and measure the audience of this website (learn more)
I accept everything
To mark the occasion, Google created a beautiful doodle tracing the evolution of its famous logo.
The evolution of the Google logo over 25 years // Source: Google
A logo that is hard to miss since Google is present everywhere.
Some signs of Google’s strength
Certain signs are unmistakable and reveal the omnipresence of Google in our lives. Three examples illustrate this particularly well. To be more precise, there are some expressions that we no longer know: the description “Mountain View firm”, the verb “google” and the profession of the YouTuber.
The press – Frandroid included – uses and abuses the term “Mountain View company” to the point that the simple name of this city is now enough to bring to mind the Google campus, even to those who have never set foot there have set. . However, several other large companies are also entitled to similar nicknames indicating the location of their headquarters (e.g. Apple and Cupertino).
Google Bay View // Source: Frandroid
For this reason, it is interesting to take another look at the verb “google”. It has been used for years to describe the action of searching on the Internet. Is there a better way to understand Google’s influence on our behavior? Few companies can boast of having created such a popular and common word.
However, Google has managed to do this twice. In addition to “googling”, another word is regularly mentioned, and this time it is a professional activity: YouTuber or YouTuber. Google owns YouTube, a video platform that has also profoundly changed our audiovisual content consumption habits. This is similar to the changes brought about by Twitch’s growth in recent years, but you will notice that the term streamer is more common than “Twitcher.”
The history of Google in a few data
In 2023, Google will therefore weigh more than ever. And its 25th anniversary is a good opportunity to look back on some important dates.
The meeting in 1995
The two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, then students, met at Stanford University in 1995 and then decided to work together starting in 1996 to launch a new search engine.
The beginnings in 1998 and the innovative search engine
Founded on September 4, 1998, Google Inc., if we can trust this old version of an About page, set up its very first premises in a garage in Menlo Park. It is therefore possible that this is the event we celebrate on September 27th, but that is just a guess. Note that on the same page we can read that the founders chose the name “Google” by playing on the mathematical term Gogol, which denoted a 1 followed by 100 zeros. “The name reflects the immense amount of information that exists and the scope of Google’s mission: to organize the world’s information and make it widely accessible and usable.”
Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 2008 // Source: Joi Ito
In the following months, the search engine gained great popularity. In January 1999, Le Monde published an article entitled “Google Conquers the Web.” The daily newspaper explains Google’s recipe for success. The latter is not a simple directory like Yahoo could be. It goes further and emphasizes the relevance of each link. Google actually crawls the web and the more links there are pointing to a website, the more relevant that website is considered and pushed up in the search results.
For every file found on the Web, Google’s computers search its database for documents that reference it. The relevance rating increases with every citation. “A document that is frequently cited as a reference is inherently more interesting than a document that no one has noticed,” suggests Sergey Brin. (Le Monde, 1999)
These are the roots of what we would later call SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the set of techniques that allow a website to be well referenced on Google. Nowadays, algorithms have obviously become more complex and the challenges have only increased.
2000 – 2001: Growth and introduction of Google Images
On May 9, 2000, the Google search engine became available in French, among other languages. In the same year, a few months later, targeted advertising based on the keywords of the searches performed made its debut.
Then in 2001, Google announced that it had indexed 3 billion documents on the Internet. In the same year, Google Images was created, inspired by a Jennifer Lopez dress that caused a stir. The days when there were only blue links are over: make room for images!
From 2004: Diversification (Gmail, Android, YouTube, Chrome, etc.)
In 2004, Gmail was launched, one of the most used email services in the world. In 2005, Google acquired the startup Android and took over the development of the largest mobile operating system to date. Shortly before, another acquisition led to the creation of Google Maps.
In 2006, the acquisition of YouTube made headlines. In September 2008, the web browser Google Chrome entered the beta phase and subsequently established itself as the market leader.
Gmail is one of Google’s flagship applications // Source: Google
This trend towards diversification is an important part of Google’s image, which invests in numerous technologies and develops countless applications over time. The creation of this vast ecosystem of products and services plays an important role in the position of the multinational company today. Wherever possible, Google uses intelligent search tools that leverage all of its expertise in this area.
Restructuring in 2015
The multinational restructured its activities in 2015 and Google became a subsidiary of the Alphabet Group. Broadly speaking, this allows Google to focus on its core activities and transfer any slightly crazier projects (robotics, autonomous cars, etc.) into the hands of its new parent company, whose founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page remain in control.
2016: Google Assistant and Pixel smartphones
Google Assistant was born in 2016 before really taking off in 2017 when it began rolling out to certain eligible Android smartphones. Note that the first generation of Pixel smartphones were now launched in 2016, marking Google’s return to this market.
2023: Go full AI
In order not to be overtaken by the success of the Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, Google is announcing a whole series of new products based on artificial intelligence in 2023, in particular a conversation agent called Google Bard.
Google Bard Extensions enable AI to interact with Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Docs, etc. // Source: Google
Despite a rather turbulent start, Google firmly believes in Bard. The sophisticated AI is based on a promising internal language model, PaLM 2. Bard recently learned French and is gradually acquiring new features that highlight the entire Google ecosystem.
An empire criticizes
This chronological evolution pretty much reflects the evolution that Google has undergone, from an innovative search engine to a gigantic empire that now weighs billions of dollars. Not surprisingly, the empire in question is often criticized and three things come up regularly.
- Concerns are being raised about the confidentiality of private data given the information Google processes and the fact that targeted advertising is its main source of revenue.
- Frequent allegations of abuse of market dominance and various anti-competitive practices, particularly in the search engine and online trading sectors. However, the record fine of a staggering 4.34 billion euros imposed by Europe concerned Android.
- Google’s plethora of promising but mismanaged projects that eventually came to a halt. The two most famous examples are Google Plus and Stadia, but they are far from the only ones.
By the way, let’s remember that Google’s Code of Conduct contained a famous phrase: “Don’t be evil” (“Ne pas être malfaisant” in French). However, the currency in question disappeared in 2018.
And what comes next?
Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Sundar Pichai, the current head of Google, published a press release on the occasion of the company’s 25th anniversary in which the topic of AI is at the center of his thoughts. “Making AI more useful for everyone and using it responsibly is the most important way for us to achieve our mission in the next decade and beyond,” he says.
The Google search engine in 1998 // Source: Google
His vision obviously doesn’t end with the next ten years. He looks 25 years into the future, to the year 2048. When a teenager somewhere in the world looks at everything we’ve built with AI and shrugs, we know we’ve done it.” And we let’s get back to work.” In this way, we promise that Google will always be omnipresent in our lives without us even paying attention to it.