When talking about Google history (GOOG), it is impossible not to first examine the history of search engines.
There have been encyclopedias for centuries, but the idea of a search engine that covers everything on the Internet was born just under 30 years ago (the creation of the first Internet search engine is credited to Alan Emtage, a McGill University student who created the search engine “Archie” – short for “archives”).
Archie solved a particularly difficult problem for data analysts — enabling the collection of so-called “sparse data” by combining a script-based data collection tool with a regular expression comparison program to help the first Internet users search for filenames by entering a user query.
Search engines became widespread over the next few years, as search items and directories such as LookSmart, Excite, Yahoo Directory, Alta Vista, Business.com, Ask.com, and Galaxy began to gain popularity among Internet users by the mid-1990s.
Google has contributed decisively to shaping the modern Internet and still plays a role. The way we live our lives today and how and what we search for are all due in large part to Google. Google has directly or indirectly influenced the lives of millions of people and continues to influence many other destinies. Most companies today use Google for self-promotion, to promote their products, and generate sales. They are looking for ways to increase their Google views to attract more customers and generate business profits. Google history began in 1996 when two distinguished scientists at Stanford University in California created a search algorithm
The name Google does not have a full form; it is formed from the word “googol,” which actually means a huge number. There was an error in the spelling of the word Google, which they later decided to use as the name of the company. The website Google.com was registered in 1997. What started out as a garage, Google, has grown into one of the largest conglomerates in the world. In this article, we will explore the history of Google, from its founding in 1996 to its expansion in 2022.
Google’s rich range of products and its size make it one of the four most influential companies in the high-tech market, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. However, despite the huge number of products, the core of the company’s success remains its original search tool.
And Google remains one of the brightest and most compelling success stories in business, and that story is growing every day.
Let’s examine Google history
Google history began in 1995 at Stanford University. At that time, Larry Page was considering Stanford for graduate school, and Sergey Brin, as a student at the university, was asked to show him around.
According to some reports about Google history, during that first meeting, they disagreed on almost all issues, but the following year they formed a partnership. In their dorm rooms, they created a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub. (The name “BackRub” came from a ranking algorithm that counted how many “backlinks” a Web page contained.)
The jewel in BackRub’s crown was a data collection system called PageRank, which ranked a Web site by counting the number of pages, adding the relevance of them and backlinks to the original Web page.
The technology led directly to Google’s takeoff, which was funded entirely by Page and Bryn, who was working from their rooms in a Stanford dormitory on a limited budget.
Pretty soon, Backrub was renamed Google. The name was a play on the mathematical expression of the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and quite reflective of Larry and Sergei’s desire to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Over the next few years of Google history, it attracted the attention not only of the academic community but also of Silicon Valley shareholders. So, in the summer of 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim gave Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially established. Bechtolsheim reportedly wrote the check immediately after seeing a demonstration of an early Google product on the porch of a Stanford professor’s house.
With that investment, the newly formed team moved from their student dormitory to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, which was owned by Susan Wojcicki (now CEO of YouTube). Bulky desktop computers, a ping-pong tennis table, and a blue carpet created the atmosphere for those early days and late nights. (To this day, the tradition of doing everything in bright colors persists).
Google Dublin Office
Already, at the beginning of Google history, everything was unconventional: from the first Google server (made out of Lego) to the appearance of the first “doodle” in 1998: a wand drawing in the logo notifying site visitors that the entire staff was vacationing at the Burning Man festival. “Don’t be evil” was the spirit of their intentionally unusual approach.
Over the following years, the company quickly grew: engineers were hired, a sales team was formed, and the first pet dog named Yoshka was born. Eventually, Google outgrew the garage and moved to its current headquarters (the so-called “Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California. The desire to do things differently led to the move. The same is true of the doggie.
Patterns of growth at Google
Over the following years, Google moved on a steady growth trajectory, hiring engineers, computer scientists, sales, administrative and marketing staff and converting its garage office into a new headquarters located in Mountain View, California, an office campus known today as the “Googleplex.”
However, Page and Brin nearly sold Google on a number of occasions during the 1990s.
According to reports, Google’s co-founders offered Yahoo, Excite, and several other Silicon Valley businesses to buy the company for $1 million. Fortunately for both of them, as well as thousands of Google employees and millions of investors today, all offers fell through, and Page and Brin continued to move forward, cementing their position in the Internet search engine market
The relentless search for better answers is still at the heart of everything they do. Today, Google has hundreds of products that are used by billions of people around the world, from YouTube and Android to Gmail and, naturally, Google Search. Even though they abandoned Lego servers and took a few more dogs to the company, their passion for creating technology for everyone has stayed with them – from their dorm room to their garage to this day.
We will also tell you about changes in Google algorithms through Google history since 2017
Google Algorithms is a comprehensive system used to retrieve data from the search index and instantly display the best results for a query. The search engine uses a combination of algorithms and multiple ranking factors to produce web pages ranked for relevance in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In its early days, Google made only a few tweaks to its algorithms. Now Google makes thousands of changes every year.
Most of the time, these changes are so minor that they go unnoticed. However, sometimes the search engine releases major algorithm updates that significantly affect the SERPs.
1998 – Initial funding in Google history
The very first employee Google hired was Craig Silverstein. Google now has more than 114,096 employees.
As of the end of the year, Google had an index of about 60 million pages
BackRub is built in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums computers running Linux. The primary database is stored on a Sun Ultra II with 28 GB of disk. Scott Hassan and Alan Sternberg provided very talented help with the project. Sergey Brin was also actively involved in the work.
1999 – The company moved to the home of startups in Silicon Valley
1999 took a special place in the lives of Page and Brin: In March, the company moved to Palo Alto, California. Another major change came in September when Google officially removed the word “beta” from its name.
18 million people searched Google every day.
Google gradually moved away from a homepage with lots of links to a simple search bar without too much garbage. Google’s emphasis on the usefulness of search without expanding into a full-fledged “portal” was the exact opposite of the norm for Internet giants at the time.
| Google Beta homepage (1998) | Google search (1999) |
Redesign of the Ruth Cedar logo
Google switched to a modern logo base based on the Catull font on May 31, 1999. The founders hired Ruth Kedar to create a simple, playful, accessible design. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Kedar said that “it was clear to us from the beginning that the company name should be at the center of the logo. We should not forget that at that time, many people were afraid to use the Internet, and it was important to show something user-friendly both on the home page and in the logo. Something simple that didn’t have to be afraid of, something catchy and full of life
Google Logo (1999)
Source: logos.wikia.com
2000 – New Languages Added
Google added ten new languages: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Danish.
By the second half of this year, 60 million people a day were searching on Google.
2001 – Google has its first chairman, Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt joined Google in 2001 as its first chairman of the board and later became its chief executive officer. In addition, Larry Page became president of products, and Sergey Brin became president of technology.
Google introduces Google Image Search with more than 250 million images in its search database.
Google added the number of web pages in its search index to the home page, and that number grew steadily over time until it was removed in 2006. At the top of the search bar was a tabbed interface to show the ability to search the web, images, groups, or directories.
Google homepage with a tabbed interface (2001)
2002 – Launch of AdWords
By introducing AdWords, the company has made Google history a success. The system uses cookies partly and partly keyword characteristics to place ad copy on pages according to relevance.
Beginning in September 2002, Google launched Google News, an idea developed by Krishna Bharat. They are now available in more than 35 languages around the world.
This was a big milestone in Google history, as AdWords gained enormous popularity in the years that followed.
On October 15, 2002, on the popular television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the expression “to Google” was heard
Google Labs is a lab set up by Google to test and publicly demonstrate new projects. It operated from early 2002 until mid-2011.
Google describes Google Labs as a gaming platform where the most daring users can play with prototypes of crazy and unusual ideas and give their opinions directly to the engineers who developed them.
2003 – The Year of AdSense
Beginning in March 2003, Google launched its AdSense platform. It was originally called Content Targeting Advertising.
A team of Google designers and illustrators has created more than 2,000 doodles for the Google homepage since it first launched in August 1998.
2004 – Google goes public and launches Gmail
After a long five-year wait, Google held its IPO on August 19, 2004. The curious fact about the IPO was that the shares were sold in an online auction format using a system created by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, who were the underwriters of the deal
Today, Gmail is one of the most powerful email platforms used around the world. However, users took it as a prank when Google actually launched Gmail on April 1, 2004. It is a free email service that users can access from anywhere in the world.
Google’s autocompleting feature was the first of its kind, appearing in 2004. It added an interesting new way to search the web and greatly improved the user experience of the search engine.
The company sold 19,605,052 shares at $85 per share. Its value was estimated at $27 billion.
2005 – Google Books and Google Earth, Android operating system
Google Books in Google history
The founders of Google were working on digital book projects at Stanford even before the company was founded and always dreamed of the day when Internet users would be able to search for relevant content in books. In 2004, the corporation announced the Google Print project, in which several major libraries around the world began making their collections freely available online. They began by scanning public domain books from the libraries’ collections using sophisticated equipment.
The resulting digital files were converted into portable document files (PDF), which could be viewed, downloaded, and printed. At the same time, works still subject to copyright appeared only in fragments. In 2005, the company renamed the project Google Books, and in its early years, about a million books were scanned each year. According to 2012 data, Google has completed more than 15 million scans of books.
Meanwhile, groups of authors and publishers sued to stop the company from making excerpts from their copyrighted books available online. In 2008, Google reached a court settlement in which the company agreed to pay the group $125 million for past violations, though users could continue to read up to 20 percent of each work scanned by Google for free. In exchange for allowing them to read portions of their works online, authors and publishers would receive 63 percent of all advertising revenue generated by page views of their material on Google.
Google Earth in Google history
In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole Inc., which was financed in part by the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Keyhole developed an online mapping service, which Google renamed Google Earth in 2005.
With this service, users could find detailed satellite images of most places on Earth and create combinations (known as “mashups”) using various other databases, including details such as street names, weather conditions, crime statistics, restaurant locations, real estate prices, and population density.
Many of these “mashups” were created for convenience or just for fun, but others have become critical life-saving tools. For example, during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Google Earth provided an interactive overlay of satellite images of the affected region, helping rescuers better understand the extent of the damage. Since then, Google Earth has become a vital tool in many disaster relief efforts.
However, Google’s commitment to privacy was called into question after the introduction of a related mapping service called Street View, which showed images of streets first in the United States and then in other countries with a street address search function. Some of the photos showed views from house windows or people sunbathing. In defense of the service, Google said that the pictures showed only what a person could see while walking down the street.
In 2010, in response to privacy concerns in Germany, Google allowed people not to participate in Street View, and 244,000 people (3 percent of the country’s population) did so. Nevertheless, even though a German court ruled in 2011 that Street View was legal, Google said it would not add new photos to the service.
The Android operating system in Google history
Google’s entry into the lucrative mobile operating system market was based on its 2005 purchase of Android Inc, which by then had not released a single product. Two years later, Google announced the formation of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of dozens of technology and cell phone companies, including Intel Corporation, Motorola, Inc, NVIDIA Corporation, Texas Instruments Incorporated, LG Electronics, Inc, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel Corporation and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom).
The consortium was formed to develop and promote Android, a free and open-source OS based on Linux. The very first phone with the new operating system was the T-Mobile G1, which came out in October 2008, although Android phones did need more powerful third-generation (3G) wireless networks to take advantage of all the system’s features, such as One-Touch Search, Google Docs, Google Earth and Street View.
iGoogle: a personalized google homepage
Google’s personalized homepage, later known as iGoogle, appeared in May 2005. iGoogle allowed users to add various “gadgets” to the homepage, which were small components of content that served a specific purpose – such as showing the clock, calendar, and weather. In 2007, iGoogle added very creative themes, many of which changed depending on the time of day. iGoogle was shut down in November 2013.
2006 – A Year of Rapid Growth in Google history
Back in early 2005, YouTube changed the game, introducing by far the most accessible and comprehensive Internet site dedicated to video. Coincidentally, around the same time, Google released its competitor, Google Video. They were both popular, but YouTube’s fast-growing platform was too strong for Google to overcome directly, so the company bought the site outright in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Google Mobile Web: With the increase in mobile users, Google decided to release its Web search for mobile users, producing the same results as on desktops.
Google Maps: The story began when two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, developed the idea of a web application that would display static maps as well as search, scroll, and zoom capabilities.
PAC-MAN was the first-ever playable Google doodle on May 21, 2010, which was the 30th anniversary of the arcade game.
In 2006, as many in the industry believe, starting a war with Microsoft, Google released Google Apps, application software that runs directly through users’ Web browsers. Among the first free programs were Google Calendar (for scheduling), Google Talk (for instant messaging), and Google Page Creator (for creating Web pages). To use these free programs, users viewed ads and stored their data on Google hardware. This type of deployment, in which both data and programs reside somewhere on the Internet, is often referred to as cloud technology.
Google bought or developed various programs designed for traditional businesses (word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software), which eventually became collectively known as Google Docs. Like Google Apps, Google Docs can be used through a browser that connects to data on Google machines.
Google Finance in Google history
Google Finance provides real-time market quotes, international exchanges, breaking financial news, and analytics to help you make more informed trading and investment decisions.
2007 – The purchase of DoubleClick
Street View technology in Google Maps debuted in five U.S. cities. Google acquires Double Click, an online advertising company. In 2007, Fortune magazine named Google the number one company to work for in the United States.
Two years later, Google Maps first appeared on Apple’s first iPhone.
In 2007, Google released Google Apps Premier Edition, which included 25 gigabytes to host email, security features from the newly acquired Postini software, and no ads. As Google Docs components became available, they were added to both the ad-supported free version of Google Apps and the Premier Edition. In particular, Google Docs was advertised as a direct competitor to Microsoft’s office suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).
Universal Search in Google history
Universal Search combined many individual Google search items on the main search results page. This enhancement allowed different types of results, such as images, videos, news, books, patents, etc., to be displayed for a particular search – without the user having to resort to a separate search in Images, Video’s, Books, etc.
2008 – Google Introduces Chrome Browser
The Chrome browser was released in 2008. Chrome is a web browser with an advanced JavaScript engine that is better suited to running programs in the browser. Google introduced Chrome first for Microsoft Windows and then moved it to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. Subsequently, 43 supported languages were launched. Google history became different with the advent of Chrome.
A new partnership with Yahoo was announced.
Google suggests in Google history
Google Suggest appeared as a test product in Google Labs. In August 2008, Google Suggest was taken out of the Labs and put into widespread use, allowing potential search queries to magically populate according to what the user typed in. This feature provides a glimpse into the universe of search queries typed in by people and has served as inspiration for several books. Google Suggest was the forerunner of Google Instant, launched in 2010.
2009 – Proclamation of Power
Forbes magazine in November ranked Sergey Brin and Larry Page among the fifth most powerful people in the world.
The company announced plans to develop an open-source operating system known as Chrome OS. The first devices to use Chrome OS were netbooks called Chromebooks, released in 2011. Chrome OS, which runs on a Linux kernel, needs fewer system resources than other operating systems because it uses cloud technology. The only software running on a Chrome OS device is the Chrome browser; all other software applications come from Google Apps.
Google Wave presentation.
Intelligent voice calling on all devices.
2010 – Nexus One, Social media, and Google Buzz
For the first time, Google has released its signature Nexus One smartphone.
Nicknamed the “Google Phone,” the Nexus One ran the latest version of Android and featured a large, bright screen, a pleasing design, and a voice messaging system based on advanced voice recognition software. However, the lack of built-in support for multitouch, text input, and navigation technology pioneered by Apple that allowed users to interact more flexibly with touchscreens was perceived as a drawback compared to other phones in this class. Yet despite Android’s perceived shortcomings compared to Apple’s iOS smartphone, by the end of 2011, Android led the cell phone industry with 52 percent global market share, more than three times that of iOS.
Also, in 2010, Google’s hardware partners began producing Android-based tablets. Many were criticized for poor performance, but by the end of 2011, Android-based tablets had overtaken the popular Apple iPad in sales. Of the estimated 68 million tablets shipped that year, 39% were running the Android operating system, while the iPad’s share was nearly 60%.
Google had to fight competitors for Android both in court and in the marketplace. In 2010, for example, Oracle sued Google for $6.1 billion, claiming that Android infringed numerous copyrights related to Oracle’s Java programming language. (Google eventually won the case after a two-year legal battle.) Apple Inc., instead of attacking Google directly, sued Android smartphone makers such as HTC, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung over alleged patent infringements.
Since 2010, Google has been acquiring an average of one each week.
As of January 2010, Google detected a series of sophisticated hacking attacks from China targeting the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and foreign journalists who worked in China. In some cases, the accounts were reconfigured so that all incoming and outgoing email was sent to other addresses. In response, Google immediately changed the Gmail protocol from web-standard HTTP to encrypted HTTPS, which increased security at the expense of speed.
The attacks also led Google to threaten to reverse its position that allowed the Chinese government to censor Google.cn and allow Chinese users to receive unfiltered search results. As a result, the company came into conflict with the Chinese government, and the possibility of Google’s complete withdrawal from the Chinese market arose. To avoid a direct conflict, in March, Google automatically redirected Chinese users of Google.cn to its unfiltered Hong Kong site Google.com.hk.
The scheme continued until the annual renewal of Google’s government-issued license to operate in China came up at the end of June. Then Google changed Google.cn as follows: users could either use the censored Chinese site for services such as music searches or manually link to Google.com.hk for Web searches. Such a move reconciled the Chinese government, which renewed Google’s license in July 2010.
Social media in Google history
Google was late in realizing the popularity and advertising potential of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Its first attempt at a social network, Google Buzz, began in 2010 and was shut down less than two years later. In addition to a number of problems, the network was limited to users with Gmail accounts and caused privacy issues because the default user profile was available to everyone.
Google Instant in Google history
Wanting to improve the speed and efficiency of search in general, Google introduced a controversial search enhancement called Google Instant. Google Instant expanded the concept of Google Suggest to the extreme, not just suggesting keywords to search for as you type but also changing search results independently in real-time. This feature is difficult to describe; it’s best done with a video demonstration. Shown here is a demonstration during the Google Instant launch event. In 2017, this option was disabled.
2011 – Larry Page becomes the new CEO
An important chapter of Google history as the company’s leadership team changed. In April, co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO, and Eric Schmidt was named executive chairman.
Larry Page was CEO of Google for two terms. (1997-2001 & 2011-2015).
Google+ in Google history
In June 2011, even before Google Buzz was shut down, the company launched Google+, first for a limited audience and then for everyone. Within a year of its launch, the social network had attracted more than 170 million users. Facebook, by contrast, took five years to reach 150 million users.
In July 2011, Google announced the discontinuation of Google Labs.
Many experiments were discontinued, although some were moved to the main search pages or integrated into other products. To this day, Google’s blogs still contain numerous links to the Labs’ dysfunctional tools, which can be easily found through a Google search.
2012 – 2013 – Chromecast launch
Google launched Chromecast, a set-top box that people can use to stream content from their phones or computers to their TV.
Google’s first tweet said, “I’m feeling lucky,” in binary code.
In 2012, the Chrome browser surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to become the most popular web browser, and as of 2020, it retains the lead over IE, Microsoft’s Edge (an IE replacement), Firefox from Mozilla Corporation, and Safari from Apple Inc.
However, Google+ faced a formidable competitor in the form of Facebook, which had about 900 million users in mid-2012. Facebook users spent a lot more time on the site, six to seven hours a month, while Google+ users averaged just over three minutes a month. Because Facebook prevented Google’s web indexing software from infiltrating its servers, Google was unable to include the giant social network in its search results, losing potentially valuable data from one of the most visited networks on the Internet.
The company, however, appeared to fully support Google+. Realizing the value of games to retain users on social networks, the company quickly created a gaming zone for the service. The company also developed innovative features that Facebook didn’t have. With Hangouts, for example, people could instantly create free video conferences for up to 10 people. The company also added Google+ pages for businesses to promote their products and brands. However, Google+ was never able to supplant Facebook, and the service was discontinued in 2019.
In November 2021, the Google Labs brand was revived for Google’s internal group, which includes Google’s AR and VR efforts, Area 120, and the Starline project.
2014 – 2015 – CEO – Sundar Pichai
Google has announced its new CEO, Sundar Pichai.
Google formed a new company called Alphabet with Page as CEO. The structure of the new parent company included Nest, Google X, Fiber, and Google Ventures. This turned out to be one of the corner moments in Google’s history.
Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004. He oversaw the development of such popular Google products as Chrome, Drive, Gmail, Google Apps, and Android.
New Google logo
One month after reorganizing its corporate structure and creating Alphabet, Google’s logo has been visually changed. The company created its own font called Product Sans, a modern, geometric sans serif font.
Google’s redesigned logo (2015)
Source: Wikipedia
2016 – The release of the Google Pixel, “the first phone produced by Google.”
Google entered the battle for a home assistant with its artificial intelligence-enabled Google Home device.
Google introduced a flagship phone under the name Pixel, dubbed “the first phone made by Google inside and out. The appearance of this phone played a crucial role in Google history. The Pixel offers free unlimited storage for images and videos.
2017 – Acquiring part of HTC in Google History
After years of working closely with the hardware maker, Google has finally acquired HTC. It shelled out $1.1 billion to get its hands on smartphone expertise from the struggling Taiwanese maker of its Nexus phones.
In 2017, Alphabet’s total revenue crossed the $100 billion ($110 billion) mark – the first time in the 20-year Google history.
Algorithm updates
June 25, 2017
Several SEO tracking tools found a significant, though unconfirmed, Google update on the day. According to one analysis, this update caused the biggest fluctuations on pages ranked 6-10. While the update affected most niches, the product and beverage industry was reportedly the most impacted.
July 9, 2017
SEO ranking tools found little volatility, which is presumably another (unconfirmed) Google quality update.
August 19, 2017
According to an analysis by Glenn Gabe, president of GSQi, among those affected by the rankings are category pages, pages with aggressive ads, lower quality/fine content, and other negative user experience elements. There is speculation that Google began testing this algorithm on August 14, as pages that were affected (positively or negatively) on that day were further affected on August 19.
September 8, 2017
Judging from industry conversations and SEO tracking tools, there may have been some (unconfirmed) implementation of a Google update on that day. Glenn Gabe, president of G-Squared Interactive, also identified several notable Google changes affecting traffic and search visibility starting on September 8. This was followed by additional volatility and fluctuations on September 18, 25, and 29, and October 4, 8, and 12.
December 12, 2017
Maccabees Update. A number of members of the search community reported that their sites experienced changes between December 12 and 14. Google confirms making a few minor changes to the main search algorithm during this period but downplayed the significance of the period.
2018 – 20 years of Google history
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reports that its annual revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time in Google’s 20-year history, a mark indicative of the strength of Google’s ad sales business in 2018.
Alphabet surpassed Amazon to become the world’s largest Internet company by market capitalization.
Sundar Pichai became CEO of Alphabet Inc. on Dec. 3, 2019.
Google launches translator mode. The feature will appear on all Android and Android Go phones. Google introduces support for seven new Indian languages, including Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, and Urdu.
Algorithm updates
March 9, April 16, and August 1, 2018
Broad Kernel Algorithm Update. A “broad core algorithm update” had been made. Although Google was short on words, it reported that the changes are intended to “benefit pages that were previously under-ranked” and encouraged everyone to “keep creating great content.”
September 27, 2018
“Minor” improvement.
On Google’s 20th birthday, many in the SEO community began noticing serious spikes and drops in traffic, indicating that some sort of update was taking place. Reportedly, some sites affected by the August update to the algorithm’s broad core were able to recover. On September 29, Danny Sullivan, responsible for Google’s search engine engagement, confirmed via Twitter that some “minor” update had taken place (but it was not a broad core algorithm update).
October 31, 2018
Halloween update. Individual webmasters reported changes starting around Halloween, possibly indicating an (unconfirmed) Google update. However, there was little evidence of a significant update. A more likely reason for these reports is the impact of the August update to the broad core algorithm and Google’s expansion of its use of neural matching.
February 13, 2019
Valentine’s Day Update. According to algorithm trackers and industry statistics, there was some unconfirmed update on this day and earlier. But unlike other updates, mostly positive ranking shifts were reported.
March 12, 2019. March 2019 kernel update (also known as “Florida 2”)
Google search spokesman Danny Sullivan confirmed via Twitter the release of a major core algorithm update. SEJ confirmed that this is a particularly important update and one of Google’s biggest updates in recent years. Sullivan once again recommended following the guidance he provided after the March 9, 2018 update.
June 2, 2019.
Kernel algorithm update in June 2019.
August 1, 2019
Featured Snippets update that affects the freshness of snippets in search results. This update allowed Google to find the freshest snippets for queries in which relevant information will be most useful.
September 24, 2019
Broad Core algorithm update.
October 25, 2019
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) update
The biggest change to Google search in the last 5 years. Google has adjusted BERT models to better understand search queries. Google reports that this change has affected both search rankings and snippets, and BERT has begun to be used in 10 percent of English-language search queries in the United States.
Dec. 9, 2019
BERT is now worldwide.
2020 is the year of big changes in Google History
Given the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced a slew of cost-cutting measures, such as limiting hiring, focusing more on machines and computing centers, etc.
In 2020, Google experienced as many as three outages that disrupted the company’s services, including Google Drive, YouTube, and the Google Apps suite. Fortunately, all of the glitches were resolved within hours.
Algorithm updates
January 13, 2020
January 2020 algorithm core update
January 22, 2020
Snippet Fragment Duplication
Danny Sullivan of Google announced on Twitter that web pages in snippet positions would no longer be duplicated in regular organic ads on the first page. This change affects 100 percent of all search ads worldwide.
May 4, 2020
Algorithm core update
December 3, 2020
Algorithm kernel update
2021 – The Year of Controversy in Google history
There have been many instances of controversy throughout Google history, but 2021 could be called the most controversial year. In 2021, Google experienced three of its most serious disputes,
- Lawsuit over Google Chrome’s incognito mode
- An investigation into alleged harassment and discrimination
- Dismissal of employees due to incentive structure and a number of other reasons.
In January 2021 in Australia, the government proposed legislation that would require Google to pay media companies for the right to use their content.
Algorithm updates
February 10, 2021
Pass-through ranking for English-language queries in the US. According to Google, this change will not mean that they index snippets independently of pages. Google still indexes pages and takes whole-page information into account when ranking. But now, they can also consider snippets from pages as an additional ranking factor.
April 8, 2021
Product Reviews update. The search ranking algorithm update was implemented to encourage “in-depth product reviews rather than thin content that just summarizes product information. Google also shared nine useful questions to consider when creating and publishing product reviews in its announcement.
June 2, 2021
Broad Core algorithm update. Some planned improvements weren’t ready for this update, so the parts that weren’t ready were implemented as part of the second related Broad Core algorithm update scheduled for July.
June 10, 2021
Protecting known victims. On June 10, Pandu Nayak, a Google researcher and vice president of search, published a post on his blog, The Keyword. He talked about Google’s efforts to improve its algorithm to bring down the rankings of sites that “use exploitative removal techniques” and “predatory practices.” In addition, he shared a link for users to report online harassment.
June 15, 2021
Page Experience update
June 23, 2021
Spam Update. An algorithm update is being implemented in search results to combat spam.
June 28, 2021
Second spam update
July 1-12, 2021
Core update
July 26, 2021
Google Link Spam algorithm update
Google announced that it has begun implementing an algorithm update designed to detect and eliminate link spam. Google said that all sites participating in link spam tactics could receive changes in rankings, with sponsored, guest, and affiliate content most likely to be affected.
Nov. 3, 2021
Another Google update for spam
Nov. 17, 2021
Broad core update.
Nov. 30-Dec. 8, 2021
Local search update
December 1, 2021
Product review update
February 22, 2022
Update page experience
2022 – Emphasis on privacy and security
In the wake of controversy over the past year, Google will focus more on privacy and security measures in 2022.
On April 6, Google announced the addition of a “privacy guide” to its chrome browser.
Algorithm updates
March 23, 2022
Product algorithm update.
Update product review rankings to identify high-quality reviews.
May 22, 2022
Core update
July 27, 2022
Update product reviews
August 25, 2022
Useful content update
Also, you can watch a video: History of Google Company – Animated
Some fun facts about Google history
- The $100,000 check Bechtolsheim wrote from Sun sat in a desk drawer in the office for weeks – Bryan and Page needed time to incorporate the company as Google Inc. since that was the name on the check.
- A $100,000 check written by Bechtolsheim from Sun sat unpaid in an office desk drawer for weeks – Bryan and Page needed time to incorporate the company as Google Inc. because that was the name on the check.
- Google has become famous on another animal-related front as well. The company occasionally “hires” goats to “mow the lawn” at its corporate headquarters in Mountain View. The goats, of which there are several hundred, stay for a week, pulling out the grass and leaving the area well-fertilized until they return.
- Google offers many languages, as well as a separate language for aliens known as Klingon. This is the language used by the aliens in the movie Star Trek. In case the aliens attack the world, Google has developed a plan in advance to help them navigate the situation.
- They don’t want us to use their search engine: Google may be the first company to set out to reduce the amount of traffic (active people on the page). To avoid problems with the server, there are employees who will crash the pages of many users who are searching for unwanted information at a given time. So the next time you’re looking for “Where to get sperm” and your page crashes, always remember that there are plenty of people who actually work.
- Google owns a whole arsenal of domain names, such as Gooogle.com, Gogle.com, Googlr.com, etc. Just in case of a misspelling, they bought out all these domains. If you try all of the above domains in your browser, you will default to Google.com.
Conclusions about Google History
Google is now continuing what it calls its “relentless pursuit of better answers” as its core business philosophy.
In addition, the company continues to grow its stellar line of products and services. And in 2015, as we mentioned, it changed the structure of its business: the parent company Alphabet now runs Google and its extensive network of offices in 50 countries around the world. Alphabet reported 2017 revenues of $110.9 billion, with a net financial profit of $12.6 billion.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were not left at a loss, either. The Google co-founders now have net profits of $54.4 billion and $53 billion, respectively. That’s pretty far from the dorm room at Stanford, and Google remains one of the brightest and most compelling success stories in business, and that story is growing every day.
