Google turns 25, celebrates birthday with a doodle: Here’s everything you need to know

Everyone’s favourite search engine, Google turned 25 years old on Wednesday and is celebrating its birthday with a doodle.

Taking a “walk down memory lane”, the company showcased different doodles on its birthday over the years. The latest one comes with a GIF which turns ‘Google’ into ‘G25gle’ – marking the 25 years. Once you click on the logo, you can see confetti on the page.

The tech giant is headed by CEO Sundar Pichai, an Indian-born American. He has been heading Google since 2015.

Google’s history:

Google was founded by doctoral students Sergey Brin and Larry Page who met in Stanford University’s computer science program in the late 90s. The two soon learned that they shared a similar vision – to make the World Wide Web a more accessible place.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, and on September 27, 1998, Google Inc. was officially born.
The Google logo has changed since that day in 1998, as may be seen in today’s Doodle. But the goal—to manage the world’s knowledge and make sure it is useful and accessible to everyone—has remained unwaveringly the same.

Google is now used by billions of people worldwide for a variety of purposes, including searching, connecting, working, and playing.

Major developments in Google over the years:

In the last 25 years, Google has evolved as a business, launching a tonne of fresh initiatives and expanding its search capabilities. For instance, in 2001, the business introduced Google photographs, which also included the ability to discover photographs. In 2001, Google also released the “Did You Mean” function, which asked users to check their spelling.

Google made it simple for users to swiftly translate between languages later in 2006 when it unveiled the Google Translate service. Over 100 languages are now supported by Google Translate, which at first only supported translation between Arabic and English.

Then, in 2008, Google introduced its mobile app for the iPhone and included capabilities like “my location” and “autocomplete.” Google Voice, which allowed users to conduct voice searches, was another significant debut in 2008.

In 2017, Google introduced Google Lens, showcasing its machine learning prowess and its ability to recognize objects and subsequently convert them into search queries. And now, “Lens sees more than 12 billion visual searches per month,” Google said.

Google also introduced quality-of-life features like Hum to Search, which enables users to hum a song that has been stuck in their head as an earworm. In 2020, Google used its machine learning expertise to enable this feature.

And now, in 2023, Google has finally shifted its focus to generative AI-powered experiences with Google Bard and its Large Language Models (LLMs) like Pathways Language Model, version 2 (PaLM 2) and the upcoming Gemini.

Google’s revenue amounted to over 74,3 billion U.S. dollars, up from the 69.1 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same quarter a year prior. The company amounted an annual revenue of 279.8 billion U.S. dollars throughout 2022, its highest value to date, with most of its earnings being powered by advertising through Google sites and its network.