Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were PhD students at Stanford University at the time. The company was incorporated in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. Google initially started as a research project aimed at improving search engine technology by developing a more efficient way to organize and rank web pages using their proprietary algorithm, which they called PageRank.
Their innovation quickly gained attention due to its ability to deliver highly relevant search results based on the relationships between websites. The search engine rapidly grew in popularity, transforming Google into a global technology giant. Today, Google is a key part of Alphabet Inc., its parent company, and has expanded its services to include everything from cloud computing, advertising, and mobile operating systems (like Android) to artificial intelligence, mapping, and more.
The company's mission—"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"—remains a central pillar of its business model, which continues to evolve and influence the tech landscape.