Google celebrates its 25-year journey from dorm room to Internet dominance.

The year The ceremony 1995-1996 Page and Byrne meet at Stanford University and create a search engine called BackRub. 1998 The startup, now named Google, receives $100,000 in funding from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. 1999 Google announced $25 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins in its very first press release, officially introducing the term “Googlers” to the world. June 2000 Google becomes the default search engine provider for Yahoo, one of the most popular websites of its time. October 2000 Launches AdWords, the online advertising platform that will become the core of Google’s business. 2001 Eric Schmidt has been named Google’s chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors. April 2004 Google has announced that it is testing Gmail releases with up to 1GB of storage capacity. August 2004 launched an initial public offering of approximately 19.6 million shares at an initial price of $85 per share. February 2005 Launches Google Maps for desktop. August 2005 Mobile startup acquires Android
Google Talk launches instant messaging service. 2006 Buys online video service YouTube for $1.65 billion. April 2007 Announced the acquisition of Web advertising provider DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. May 2007 Introduces Universal Search that gives users simultaneous access to search results across all content types, such as images, videos and news. September 2008 Launch of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 or HTC Dream.
Google launches the Chrome web browser. January 2010 Launched the Nexus One, a smartphone developed in collaboration with HTC. March 2010 Stops censoring search results in China, leading to its ban in the country. October 2010 Google tested its first self-driving cars in California with a small fleet of Toyota Prius cars. June 2011 Launched the Google+ social networking service, which was discontinued in 2018. August 2011 Announces acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which includes Motorola’s cell phone and TV set-top box businesses, for $12.5 billion. 2012 Google Glass launched. 2013 Announced the acquisition of Israeli mapping startup Waze for nearly $1 billion. 2014 announced in January that it would acquire AI firm DeepMind.
In the same month, it announced a $3.2 billion deal to buy smart thermostat and smoke alarm maker Nest Labs. 2015 Announces plans to create a new publicly listed company, Alphabet, which will include Google and other units including YouTube and research and venture capital businesses. Sundar Pichai appointed CEO of Google October 2016 Launched the first Pixel smartphone. November 2016 Google Home launches smart speaker. June 2017 The European Commission fined Google 2.42 billion euros for violating its search neutrality. February 2018 Google reported full-year sales of more than $100 billion in a single year for the first time. July 2018 The European Commission fined Google 4.34 billion euros for anti-competitive behavior regarding its Android operating system. March 2019 The European Commission fined the company 1.49 billion euros for anti-competitive conduct in relation to its online advertising business. June 2019 Google announced the acquisition of analytics startup Locker for $2.6 billion. November 2019 Announced acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1 billion. December 2019 Co-founders Page and Byrne announced they were stepping down as CEO and president, respectively. Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet. 2020 Alphabet reached $1 trillion in market capitalization. January 2023 The company has cut 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce. February 2023 Google announced Bard, a creative AI-powered chatbot that can generate text content and retrieve information from the Internet. However, a factual error in AI tool demo tank Alphabet’s shares wiped $100 billion from the company’s market capitalization.
Susan Wojcicki, one of Google’s first employees, is stepping down as CEO of YouTube. Neil Mohan replaced him. March 2023 Starts rolling out Bard for some users.