Raise your glasses and wish a very happy belated birthday to Google, as they turned 20 years old on September 27, 2018. President and Co-Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed the original search engine in their dorm rooms at Stanford University in 1995. Their unconventional way of thinking and doing caught the attention of Silicon Valley investors.
In 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, signed a check to the two Google founders for $100,000. The dorm room office was upgraded to a garage, and eventually into the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA. Within the past 20 years Google has released 8 products, used by 1 billion users, including, Google search, Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, Android, Play Store, and Drive.
Though, Google’s tech journey has not always been perfect, there have been some bumps along their road to success. Following the 2016 presidential election, users have been much more skeptical of products, such as Facebook and YouTube. Google remains under scrutiny for tracking users web usage, including access to users personal information.
According to a note to Fast Company from EFF legal director Corynne McSherry, “Google has become a leader in surveillance capitalism, tracking our web usage in order to make money for itself and other”. With that said, one cant deny the gigantic success of Google. A statement from Google reads, “Today, with more than 60,000 employees in 50 different countries, Google makes hundreds of products used by billions of people across the globe” they go on to share, “our passion for building technology for everyone has stayed with us”.
There’s no guessing what steps Google might take next, but if its anything like the last 20 years, we’re in for a treat.