40 photos of Google's rise from a Stanford dorm room to becoming a global internet superpower (GOOG, GOOGL)

Not only is Google the most-visited website in the world it also makes Android, the most popular operating system in the world, an Google Chrome, the most popular web browser. It operates at least 15 massive data centers worldwide.

And on the back of its incredibly profitable advertising business, Google is worth some $685 billion.

But it wasn't always that way.

Here's a look at the history of Google, from its roots in a pair of Stanford dorm rooms, to Larry Page and Sergey Brin's attempt to sell the company, all the way through the explosive announcement that Google was becoming Alphabet and this year's worldwide employee walkout.

Google got its start in 1996, when two Stanford PhD students named Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin (right) had the idea for "BackRub," a revolutionary search engine that used a technology called "PageRank" that would rank web pages based on how many other web pages linked back to them.

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Google

Page and Brins first office was actually their two Stanford dorm rooms. The "BackRub" name didnt last long, as they decided that a "googol," or the number one with a hundred zeroes after it, better reflected the amount of data they were trying to sift through. The slightly friendlier name "Google" was chosen for the fledgling company.

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Google

The first-ever Google server was built in a custom case made out of Legos and housed on the Stanford campus. At first, it was just at google.stanford.edu, but the Google.com domain name was registered on September 15th, 1997.

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Wikimedia Commons

Eventually, Google drained too much of Stanfords bandwidth, and the IT department kicked them out. Page and Brin relocated the fledgling company in the garage of future Google employee and YouTube head Susan Wojcicki.

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MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ / AP Images

Around the same time they moved into the garage, Brin and Page got a crucial $100,000 seed investment from Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim. With funding in hand, Google officially incorporated in their garage headquarters on September 4th, 1998.

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Wikimedia Commons

Googles first homepage was not much of a looker. Neither Page nor Brin had much expertise with the website programming language HTML, choosing to focus their efforts on the algorithms that made it run.

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Google

Not long after Google officially incorporated, the first-ever Google Doodle appeared when Brin and Page wanted to commemorate the 1998 Burning Man Festival, of which they remain big fans to this day.

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Google

In 1998, Page and Brin tapped Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD candidate at Stanford, to be Googles first employee.

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Business Insider / Jillian D'Onfro

At this point, Google was running in a shared data center in Santa Clara, California. Larry Page talked the data center owner into giving Google a break on their bandwidth bills because most of the companys web traffic was inbound, and the data centers usual customers focused on pushing data out.

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Urs Holze

At one point in 1999, Google was almost acquired by Excite, a leading search engine at the time. Excite would have acquired Google for $750,000 in cash, Excites then CEO George Bell has said. But the the deal fell through for reasons that are still debated, and Google continued on its own.

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OneWire

Page and Brin decided to make it a business, after all. In March of 1999, Google moved into its first-ever office at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto the same office building that housed companies like PayPal and Logitech.

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Google

Not long after, Google raised its first round of venture capital funding in the form of a $25 million investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Sequoia Capital. That probably bought its developers a lot more beer.

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Google

Google debuted its AdWords product in late 2000, enabling businesses to buy ads related to search terms. By this point, Google was already rising in popularity as a search engine, so it had a steady revenue stream that kept it going through the dot-com burst that claimed so many startups.

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Googles star was definitely on the rise, and Brin and Page were becoming rock stars in the tech community for succeeding where everybody else failed.

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RANDI LYNN BEACH / AP Images

Around the time it started making money in 2000, Google adopted its famous, but unofficial, corporate philosophy: "Dont be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served as shareholders and in all other ways by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

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Tangi Bertin/Flickr

At investor Sequoias urging, Brin and Page brought on Eric Schmidt as the companys first CEO in 2001, leaving the founders free to focus on Googles technology.

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Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

By this point, the Google team was growing out of its Palo Alto offices.

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Google

So in 2003, Google leased its now-famous Googleplex campus from ailing, old-school tech giant Silicon Graphics International. By 2006, Google was able to buy the Googleplex outright.

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OpenBuildings

The Googleplex became a symbol of Silicon Valley success. Google worked hard to make it a little more whimsical than your average campus. The original main campus building is well-known for having a slide that connects the first two floors.

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Reddit / SpaceCaseSixtyTen

Plus, Google was the first big tech company to offer free meals to its employees. The Google cafeteria became the stuff of Silicon Valley legend.

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Flickr/Dmitry Alekseenko

It also has a famous dinosaur statue often covered in flamingos. Google employee rumor holds that its a reminder to its employees to not go extinct.

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OpenBuildings

On August 19th, 2004, Google had its initial public offering on the stock market, priced at $85 per share. Today, a share in Google costs $991.25.

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Getty Images

On April 1st, 2004, Google announced a private beta for Gmail, an e-mail service. Because it was on April Fools Day, the media and users all thought it was a prank at first.

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Biz Stone

After the IPO, Google set its sights on expanding past the search engine. From September to October, Google bought startups Keyhole, Where2, and ZipDash, which would go on to form the basis of Google Maps.

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Flickr / Sancho McCann

In 2005, Google bought a tiny startup that was making an operating system for digital cameras. It was called Android and was led by Andy Rubin.

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AP

In 2006, Google snapped up Upstartle, a company that made a popular web browser-based word processor called Writely. That one would go on to become Google Docs.

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Google

2006 also saw Google buy up YouTube, a brand-new video-sharing site that was founded by a bunch of ex-PayPal employees. Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube.

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YouTube

Google was getting bigger and bigger. In 2006, Google opened up its first wholly-owned and designed data center in The Dalles, Oregon, on the banks of the Columbia river.

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Google

Google has a history of squeezing out incredibly high levels of efficiency from its data centers with inventive new designs a history that started at that first Oregon site.

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Google

Google was so popular by this point that "Googling" had become an acceptable word for "searching the Internet." In June of 2006, the verb "google" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary

In 2008, the HTC Dream hit the market. It was the first-ever Android smartphone that consumers could buy. Today, Google Android is the most popular operating system on the planet.

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Wikimedia

The year 2008 also saw Google introduce Google Chrome, a web browser that integrated tightly with Googles growing roster of web services. Google wanted to make sure that on every device, you keep using Google and looking at Google ads.

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Google

In 2011, Schmidt stepped down as Google CEO, though he kept his title as executive chairman, and stuck around to advise Page and Brin. Larry Page became the new CEO of Google.

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Flickr / loiclemur

With its dominance in search all but locked down, Pages Google focused on some crazy, next-generation ideas. In 2010, Google announced that it was working on driverless cars that didnt require a human to operate.

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Google

In 2012, Google announced Google Glass, a wearable computer that would present information in your field of vision. It didnt catch on the way people hoped, but it made an impact.

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In October 2015, Google shocked the world by completely shaking up its corporate structure. Brin, Page, and Schmidt turned Google into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, a new parent company. Larry Page became the CEO of Alphabet.

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AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Former Google Chrome head Sundar Pichai was named new Googles CEO, guiding the future of the newly-formed Alphabets most important and profitable businesses including the Google search engine and YouTube.

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Google

Pichai has overseen some of Googles most significant crises to date. Google came under fire for its role in facilitating the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election, even as YouTubes algorithm was criticized for promoting conspiracy theories.

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Associated Press/Jacquelyn Martin

2018 was marked by turmoil within Googles walls, too. Google faced internal backlash after employees rebelled against Project Maven, a program with the Pentagon. Later, employees voiced their displeasure with Project Dragonfly, an initiative to bring a censored search product to China.

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Aly Song/Reuters

Read more about Project Maven here . Read more about Project Dragonfly here .

A dramatic episode came in November, when Google employees walked out en masse froetoaround t world to protest what they saw as the companys mishandling of sexual misconduct cases involving executives.

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Katie Canales/Business Insider

Read more about the Google Walkout here .

In November, Pichai was asked to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee, where he addressed accusations from conservative lawmakers that Googles search results are biased. Pichai denied such claims, saying: "I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way."

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Getty

Only time will tell if Google which powers 90% of internet searches in the US will continue to dominate the way we find our information online.

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AP

40 photos of Google's rise from a Stanford dorm room to becoming a global internet superpower (GOOG, GOOGL)

Google got its start in 1996, when two Stanford PhD students named Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin (right) had the idea for "BackRub," a revolutionary search engine that used a technology called "PageRank" that would rank web pages based on how many other web pages linked back to them.

The first-ever Google server was built in a custom case made out of Legos and housed on the Stanford campus. At first, it was just at google.stanford.edu, but the Google.com domain name was registered on September 15th, 1997.

Eventually, Google drained too much of Stanfords bandwidth, and the IT department kicked them out. Page and Brin relocated the fledgling company in the garage of future Google employee and YouTube head Susan Wojcicki.

Around the same time they moved into the garage, Brin and Page got a crucial $100,000 seed investment from Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim. With funding in hand, Google officially incorporated in their garage headquarters on September 4th, 1998.

Googles first homepage was not much of a looker. Neither Page nor Brin had much expertise with the website programming language HTML, choosing to focus their efforts on the algorithms that made it run.

Not long after Google officially incorporated, the first-ever Google Doodle appeared when Brin and Page wanted to commemorate the 1998 Burning Man Festival, of which they remain big fans to this day.

In 1998, Page and Brin tapped Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD candidate at Stanford, to be Googles first employee.

At this point, Google was running in a shared data center in Santa Clara, California. Larry Page talked the data center owner into giving Google a break on their bandwidth bills because most of the companys web traffic was inbound, and the data centers usual customers focused on pushing data out.

At one point in 1999, Google was almost acquired by Excite, a leading search engine at the time. Excite would have acquired Google for $750,000 in cash, Excites then CEO George Bell has said. But the the deal fell through for reasons that are still debated, and Google continued on its own.

Page and Brin decided to make it a business, after all. In March of 1999, Google moved into its first-ever office at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto the same office building that housed companies like PayPal and Logitech.

Not long after, Google raised its first round of venture capital funding in the form of a $25 million investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Sequoia Capital. That probably bought its developers a lot more beer.

Google debuted its AdWords product in late 2000, enabling businesses to buy ads related to search terms. By this point, Google was already rising in popularity as a search engine, so it had a steady revenue stream that kept it going through the dot-com burst that claimed so many startups.

Googles star was definitely on the rise, and Brin and Page were becoming rock stars in the tech community for succeeding where everybody else failed.

At investor Sequoias urging, Brin and Page brought on Eric Schmidt as the companys first CEO in 2001, leaving the founders free to focus on Googles technology.

By this point, the Google team was growing out of its Palo Alto offices.

So in 2003, Google leased its now-famous Googleplex campus from ailing, old-school tech giant Silicon Graphics International. By 2006, Google was able to buy the Googleplex outright.

The Googleplex became a symbol of Silicon Valley success. Google worked hard to make it a little more whimsical than your average campus. The original main campus building is well-known for having a slide that connects the first two floors.

Plus, Google was the first big tech company to offer free meals to its employees. The Google cafeteria became the stuff of Silicon Valley legend.

It also has a famous dinosaur statue often covered in flamingos. Google employee rumor holds that its a reminder to its employees to not go extinct.

On August 19th, 2004, Google had its initial public offering on the stock market, priced at $85 per share. Today, a share in Google costs $991.25.

On April 1st, 2004, Google announced a private beta for Gmail, an e-mail service. Because it was on April Fools Day, the media and users all thought it was a prank at first.

After the IPO, Google set its sights on expanding past the search engine. From September to October, Google bought startups Keyhole, Where2, and ZipDash, which would go on to form the basis of Google Maps.

In 2005, Google bought a tiny startup that was making an operating system for digital cameras. It was called Android and was led by Andy Rubin.

In 2006, Google snapped up Upstartle, a company that made a popular web browser-based word processor called Writely. That one would go on to become Google Docs.

2006 also saw Google buy up YouTube, a brand-new video-sharing site that was founded by a bunch of ex-PayPal employees. Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube.

Google was getting bigger and bigger. In 2006, Google opened up its first wholly-owned and designed data center in The Dalles, Oregon, on the banks of the Columbia river.

Google has a history of squeezing out incredibly high levels of efficiency from its data centers with inventive new designs a history that started at that first Oregon site.

Google was so popular by this point that "Googling" had become an acceptable word for "searching the Internet." In June of 2006, the verb "google" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

In 2008, the HTC Dream hit the market. It was the first-ever Android smartphone that consumers could buy. Today, Google Android is the most popular operating system on the planet.

The year 2008 also saw Google introduce Google Chrome, a web browser that integrated tightly with Googles growing roster of web services. Google wanted to make sure that on every device, you keep using Google and looking at Google ads.

In 2011, Schmidt stepped down as Google CEO, though he kept his title as executive chairman, and stuck around to advise Page and Brin. Larry Page became the new CEO of Google.

With its dominance in search all but locked down, Pages Google focused on some crazy, next-generation ideas. In 2010, Google announced that it was working on driverless cars that didnt require a human to operate.

In 2012, Google announced Google Glass, a wearable computer that would present information in your field of vision. It didnt catch on the way people hoped, but it made an impact.

In October 2015, Google shocked the world by completely shaking up its corporate structure. Brin, Page, and Schmidt turned Google into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, a new parent company. Larry Page became the CEO of Alphabet.

Former Google Chrome head Sundar Pichai was named new Googles CEO, guiding the future of the newly-formed Alphabets most important and profitable businesses including the Google search engine and YouTube.

Pichai has overseen some of Googles most significant crises to date. Google came under fire for its role in facilitating the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election, even as YouTubes algorithm was criticized for promoting conspiracy theories.

2018 was marked by turmoil within Googles walls, too. Google faced internal backlash after employees rebelled against Project Maven, a program with the Pentagon. Later, employees voiced their displeasure with Project Dragonfly, an initiative to bring a censored search product to China.

A dramatic episode came in November, when Google employees walked out en masse froetoaround t world to protest what they saw as the companys mishandling of sexual misconduct cases involving executives.

Only time will tell if Google which powers 90% of internet searches in the US will continue to dominate the way we find our information online.

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