Google’s 27th Birthday: The Surprising Truth Behind Its Date, Iconic Logo & Legacy
Early Days: From BackRub to Google Google began as a Stanford PhD project in 1996 called BackRub, a search engine that ranked pages by links ndtv.com. Co‑founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated the company on Sept 4, 1998 and soon rented a Menlo Park garage (from future YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki) as their first office ndtv.com. Crucially, in August 1998 Sun Microsystems co‑founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 cheque payable to “Google Inc.” – effectively turning the fledgling project into a real company ndtv.com ndtv.com. (Google’s own anniversary page notes it was “founded in 1998 to organize the world’s