Google turns 27: Nostalgic doodle brings back the vintage logo

“As we celebrate Google’s birthday today, we remember our humble beginnings as a research project in a garage – proof that breakthrough moments can start in ordinary places,” Google said. The doodle artwork shows the first-ever logo, which instantly transports one to the 90s.

Back in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google while they were pursuing PhDs at Stanford University. Initially, they developed a search engine named BackRub that ranked pages based on backlinks. Eventually, they renamed it Google. The company had a meteoric rise owing to its fast and relevant search results.

Over the years, Google expanded into products such as Gmail, Maps, Android, Chrome, and YouTube. In 2004, Google’s IPO marked a major milestone, and in 2015, it became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., its newly created parent company. Today, Google is among the world’s most influential tech companies that are shaping the internet and how we advertise in a digital world.

Sundar Pichai is currently the CEO of both Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. Other key people at Google, as of today, are Ruth Porat, president and CIO; Anat Ashkenazi, CFO; and Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. Page and Brin continue to remain influential shareholders, and Alphabet recently crossed a $3 trillion valuation, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. Much of Google’s growth is propelled by its strong performance in search, cloud computing, AI, and advertising.