Google began in 1996 as a research project by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their idea was simple but revolutionary: create a search engine that ranked web pages based on how many other sites linked to them—a system they called PageRank. Originally named Backrub, their creation quickly evolved into Google, a play on the word “googol,” symbolizing the vast amount of information they aimed to organize.

By 1998, Google was officially incorporated, and with a $100,000 investment from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the pair moved their operations from a dorm room to a garage in Menlo Park. Google’s clean interface and incredibly accurate search results quickly outshined competitors like Yahoo and AltaVista. The launch of Google AdWords in 2000 turned it into a revenue-generating machine, marking a major turning point.

Successes stacked up quickly. Google went public in 2004 and soon after released Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Earth. In 2006, it made one of its most famous acquisitions: YouTube, which would grow into the world’s largest video-sharing platform. Google Chrome launched in 2008, further embedding the company into users’ daily lives.

However, not every venture was a win. Google Glass failed to gain mainstream traction due to privacy concerns and limited functionality. The company also faced criticism over privacy issues, antitrust investigations, and concerns about its dominance in digital advertising and search.

In 2015, Google underwent a major restructuring, becoming a subsidiary of a new parent company: Alphabet Inc. This allowed its founders to split core business (Google Search, Ads, Android, etc.) from riskier “moonshot” projects like self-driving cars (Waymo), health tech (Verily), and internet balloons (Loon).

Today, Google is an integral part of modern life, with billions of users relying on its products daily—from Search and YouTube to Google Docs and Android. Though Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped back from day-to-day operations in 2019, their vision continues to shape the company.

A Business Lesson from Larry Page and Sergey Brin

One key principle from Google’s founders is: “Always work on something uncomfortably exciting.” Page and Brin believed the biggest breakthroughs come from tackling huge problems with bold ideas. Their story shows that lasting impact comes not just from ambition, but from the courage to think differently and pursue what others may think impossible.