In just over a quarter-century of history, Google has become one of the most popular brands in the world. Practically all of us use, at some point during the day, something that has passed through the hands of Google engineers and developers. Whether it is because we search for something in its search engine, use Maps to find our way around, or carry an Android phone, the multicolored G is almost omnipresent in our lives.
In this article, you will discover 25 facts about this company, a key player in the history of the internet, and its impact on the world that are sure to surprise you.
Are we ready? Let us dive in.
… but it was on September 27, 1998 when they officially launched it.
Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, met Larry Page at Stanford University while showing him around campus, since Page was a new student. Together, they created the original paper describing how Google worked. At the time, it was simply a doctoral thesis by two Stanford students who had met a couple of years earlier. Their idea was to go beyond simply counting the number of keywords used. The software they developed considered other factors, such as the relationship between web pages, to determine their ranking more accurately.
Both were working as graduate students in the Gates Computer Science Building, a facility that had only been open for a year, a complex of study rooms, a library, and classrooms made possible by a $6 million contribution from Bill Gates.
In 1997 they registered the domain Google.com, and a year later that project was already available on the web.
The first search ever made on Google was “Gerhard Casper”, the president of Stanford University, where Brin and Page worked. The idea was to check that Google returned the correct result and not Casper the Friendly Ghost, which was what happened when you searched the name in one of its early competitors, the AltaVista search engine.
In other words, it was a test to prove that Google really was better than its competitors.
Google’s first workplace was a garage in Menlo Park, California, which Brin and Page rented from former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
Google’s first name was not Google, but Backrub, as we explained in “why Google is called Google.” BackRub referred to the links (backlinks) that a search engine could provide. They were not especially convinced by the name, so in a later brainstorming session they decided to change it to Google.
Its curious name is a variation of the mathematical term googol, which represents a one followed by 100 zeros, a gigantic, almost infinite number. The name has always suggested that the main goal of Google’s founders, Brin and Page, was to organize an infinite amount of information on the internet and make that vast collection meaningful.
As explained by Stanford University: “Sean Anderson (one of Page and Brin’s classmates) and Larry Page were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think of a good name, something related to indexing an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word ‘googolplex,’ and Larry responded with ‘googol.’
Sean was sitting at his computer terminal, so he ran a search in the internet domain name registration database to see whether the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as ‘google.com,’ which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name ‘google.com’ for himself and Sergei.”
First Google logo
Not coincidentally, the company’s current headquarters in Mountain View, California, is called the Googleplex, in reference to the googolplex, another unimaginably large mathematical term equal to a one followed by a googol of zeros.
If the city of Vigo has Dinoseto, Google also has its own dinosaur mascot. Walking through Google’s main campus in Mountain View, you can find the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex named Stan on display, which the company considers its official mascot.
It is 10 meters long, and there are several explanations for its name: from it being a tribute to Stanford University to it being named in honor of Marvel superhero creator Stan Lee. The founders are said to have bought it to remind employees not to let Google go extinct, because even the most extraordinary creatures can disappear.
Continuing with these naming curiosities, we come to PageRank, a rating system Google uses to measure the authority of websites. So this name does not refer to a “page ranking,” but to one of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page.
Doodles have been a constant throughout Google’s history. These designs, which take center stage on the search homepage to commemorate different events, began in 1998 with a stick figure informing users that the entire staff was at the Burning Man festival. This change was meant to let users know that if any issue arose, it would not be resolved quickly.
The first time the expression “to google something” was used on television as a verb was during an episode of the legendary series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on October 15, 2002, spoken by the character Willow, played by Alyson Hannigan. Then, in 2006, “Google” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a transitive verb. The company entered into a legal dispute over this, fearing it could affect the brand… and lost.
The company restructured its organization in 2015: the parent company was renamed Alphabet, responsible for bringing together all of Google’s services.
At that moment, a new era began for Google/Alphabet. Since then, the company’s CEO has been Indian engineer Sundar Pichai.
For years, Don’t be evil was Google’s motto and a phrase used in its corporate code of conduct. After the 2015 restructuring, Alphabet changed it to “should do the right thing”, “Do the right thing.”
Google has bought hundreds of companies since its founding, with Wiz being the most expensive of them all. Google completed the acquisition of this cloud cybersecurity company for $32 billion in March 2026.
Other major Google acquisitions include some of the building blocks of what the company is today. This happened, for example, with the social network YouTube, acquired in 2006 for more than $1.6 billion, as we explained in this article. But it also happened with the artificial intelligence company DeepMind and DoubleClick, a fundamental tool in its advertising ecosystem. Here you can see Google’s list of mergers and acquisitions.
The company’s power is so immense that Google has the most widely used search engine in the world (Google), the most widely used browser in the world (Chrome), and… yes, the most popular mobile operating system: Android.
The Google cemetery is full of brands that were highly relevant in their day but no longer exist, such as the social network Google+, Google Talk, Picasa, and Panoramio.
Google has a lab for innovative ideas (“moonshots”) called X. That is where Google Glass, the augmented reality glasses it once pushed so heavily (and which were not very successful), and Waymo, its self-driving cars, came from.
19. Self-driving cars
By the way, Waymo already provides fully autonomous commercial robotaxi services in multiple cities, and it continues to grow: in February 2026 it announced a $16 billion funding round, financed mostly by Alphabet.
For years, Google operated Google Loon, a division working on the development of balloons that could provide internet access to remote areas. It shut down in 2021.
In 2025, Alphabet generated $400 billion in revenue, more than the annual GDP of countries such as Portugal, Peru, or New Zealand. That revenue figure represented year-over-year growth of 15% compared with 2024.
Despite the cutbacks it underwent during 2022/2023, Google currently has more than 198,000 employees in 50 countries.
Although it is difficult to know with complete accuracy, it is estimated that 13.68 billion searches are made on Google every day around the world.
24. Gemini surpasses 1 billion users
Of course, Google has also managed to ride the AI wave, which it leads alongside companies such as OpenAI. In August 2026, the Gemini app had surpassed 1 billion monthly users, more than double the figure from a year earlier. “It is our fastest-growing product ever, and the fourteenth to surpass the 1 billion user milestone,” Sundar Pichai explained.
Did you already know these facts about Google’s history? What do you think?
Image: Depositphotos
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