Google.com today completes 18 years

New Delhi, India, September 15, 2015: Eighteen years back Google Co-founders Larry Page and SergeyBrin begin their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web giving birth to Google.com. Google.com was registered as a domain on September 15^th 1997. The name—a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google.com since then has seen tremendous growth and expansion touching lives of millions of users around the world. 

Here’s a quick- look at Google’s journey to delight its users over the years:

• September 15, 1997: com domain registered

• August 30, 1998: First Google-doodle inspired by Burning Man Festival in US

• April 1, 2000: Google Mentalplex Circle – 1^st April fool trick by Google

• May 9, 2000: The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish. Today, search is available in 150+ languages.

• June 2000: In June 2000, Google became the world’s largest search engine.

• October 23, 2000: Launch of Google AdWords with 350 customers

• December 2000: Google Toolbar is released—a browser plugin that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage. 

• July 2001: Google Images launches, initially offering access to 250 million images. Today it offers the most comprehensive image search on the web.

• August 2001: Google’s opens its first international office in Tokyo

• December 2001: First annual Google Zeitgeist, a visual look at what millions of people searched for over the year just ending.

• September 2002: Google News launches with 4,000 news sources. Today Google News includes 50,000+ news sources, with 70 regional editions in different languages.

• February 2003: Google acquires Blogger, includes synonyms in search

• December 2003: Launch of Google Print (now known as Google Books), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results. In 2004, the program expands through digital scanning partnerships with libraries. To date, Google has scanned more than 20 million books.

• January 2004: Google launches Orkut; in its heyday the most important social network in several countries.

• February 2004: Google’s first-ever Twitter post was in February 2004. It was binary for “I’m feeling lucky.

• April 01, 2004: Google launched Gmail on April Fools’ Day. At first invite-only, today it boasts more than 425 million users.

• October 2004: Google opens its new offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India. Googlers in India have worked on products ranging from Map Maker to ads to Chrome.

• February 2005: Google Maps goes live. Just two months later, we added satellite views and directions to the product.

• April 2005: First video uploaded on YouTube. Today, 100+ hours of video are uploaded every minute and people watch 6 billion hours of video per month!

• June 2005: Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.

• June 2005: Googleunveil Google Earth, a satellite imagery-based mapping service that lets you take a virtual journey to any location in the world. Google Earth has since been downloaded more than 1 billion times.

• November 2005: Launch of Google Analytics

• November 2005: The first Doodle 4 Google contest takes place in the United Kingdom. Since then, we’ve run Doodle 4 Google contests in countries across six continents, with more than 1 million doodles submitted by students eager for the chance to see their artwork on the Google homepage.

• April 2006: Google Translate launches, offering translations between Arabic and English. Today Google machine translation service provides translations between 80+ different languages. The latest updates provides for real-time visual translations.

• May 2006: Google release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

• May 2006: Google Earth launched letting users take a virtual journey to any place in the world

• February 2007: Google adds traffic information to Google Maps for 30+ cities around the U.S. Today, live traffic data is available in 50+ countries, covering highways, streets and more in 600+ major cities including India.

• May 2007: Google announced new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.

• May 2007: Google street view debuts on Google Maps in five cities in US

• November 2007: Android is announced; the first open platform for mobile devices—and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance.

• May 2008: Google host the first Google I/O, its annual developer conference, in San Francisco. I/O has grown since then; in addition to the thousands of developers who join in person every year, millions of people tune in via live stream to hear the latest news on products.

• September 2008: The G1, the first Android based smartphone is released

• September 02, 2008: Google Chrome becomes available for download. Chrome boasts more than 750 million users

• February 2009: Google launch Voice Search on Android. Android users can start searching by voice with the touch of a button, making mobile web surfing easy and fast. Today voice search works in 38+ languages.

• July 2009: Google starts developing Google Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system initially targeted at laptops.

• October 2009: Introduction of Google Maps Navigation; a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system with 3D views, voice guidance and live traffic data.

• January 2010: Google introduced the Nexus One to show what’s possible on Android devices. The Nexus line of devices has since grown and now includes tablets as well as phones.

• May 2010: Google launches its first ever playable doodle in celebration of PAC-Man’s 30th birthday

• September 2010: Launch of Google Instant; shows you search results as you type so you can quickly get to the information you’re looking for.

• February 2011: Google Art Project (now Google Cultural Institute) goes live. Since then it has digitised and archived millions of artefacts from multiple partners across 40 countries with the stories that bring them to life, in a virtual museum

• February 2011: In one week Google received a record 75,000 job applications for 6,000 openings in US.

• May 2011: In May 2011, over 1 billion unique visitors visited the Google website

• June 2011: Google added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. Simply click the microphone in the Google search box, and you can speak your search.

• July 2011: Talented young scientist’s wow the judges at the inaugural Google Science Fair, an online science competition open to students aged 13-18 from around the world.

• August 2011: Google brought offline access to Gmail, Calendar and Docs for people using Chrome.

• June 2011: The Google+ project—real-life sharing, rethought for the web—launches.

• October 2011: In October 2011, Google Earth reached its 1 billion download milestone

• December 2011: Android Market (now Google Play) exceeds 10 billion app downloads—with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month.
• February 2012: Chrome launches on Android, so you can take the same simple, fast and secure web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices. Three months later we launch Chrome on iOS.

• April 2012: Google Drive launches, enabling you to create, share, collaborate and keep your files—including videos, photos, Google Docs and PDFs—all in one place.

• May 2012: The Knowledge Graph in Search is launched, which makes it easier for you to discover information about real-world things—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, movies, work of art and more.

• June 2012: Google announced Google Now, which brings you the information you need, before you even ask, like what today’s weather will be like, how much traffic to expect on your way to work or your favorite team’s score while they’re playing.

• June 2013: Google unveils Project Loon (balloon-powered Internet access), an option for connecting rural, remote and underserved areas, and for crisis response communications.

• July 2013: Google releases the updated Google Maps app for smartphones and tablets.

• September 2013: Android passes 1 billion device activations—reflecting the work of the entire Android ecosystem and also a reflection of the enthusiasm of users all around the world.

• July 2014: Google Maps made available in Hindi language; added Hindi voice navigation

• September 2014: Introduction of Android One in India

• October 2014: Google Voice search now accepts Indian accents

• Feb 2015: Google Maps completed 10 years

• June 2015: Launch of Google Photos, Google Weblight and Google real time visual Translation 

• September 01, 2015: Google adopts new logo logo and branding, to reckon with a world of seamless computing reflecting how Google is working for users across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).

• By 2020, Google expects 600 million online users with online videos being accessed by 500 million people.

People:

• In 2004, Google started its India office with five people and now has more than 2,000 staff across Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

• Google Search:

• In 1998, Google was serving ten thousand search queries per day
• In September 1999, one year after being launched, Google was already answering 3.5 million search queries daily
• In mid of 2000, search volume had increased fivefold, reaching 18 million queries on an average day
• in April 2004, users around the world were submitting more than 200 million queries to Google every day.
• In 2006, Google served more than ten thousand search queries per second
• August 2012, Google’s search engine found more than 30 trillion unique URLs on the Web, crawled 20 billion sites a day, and processed 100 billion searches every month (an average of 3.3 billion searches per day and over 38,000 thousand per second)
• In 2012, Google served 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages
• Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average

Google Maps:

• Google Maps resulted from Google’s product experiment called “Search by Location,” in 2003
• Google Maps was launched in Feb 08, 2005
• By the end of 2006, less than two years after launch, Google Maps was the largest maps provider in the world.
• 2007: Google introduced Street View
• June 2008: Google introduced Google Map maker
• July 2014: Google Maps made available in Hindi language; added Hindi voice navigation
• Feb 2015:Google Maps completed 10 years
• Google Maps today serves more than a billion users
• Google Maps is now Google’s second-largest property after its ubiquitous search engine.
• For Google Maps to function accurately, it relies on over 20 petabytes of data, which is equal to approximately 21 million gigabytes, or around 20,500 terabytes.
• Google Maps navigation helps guide the world through 12 billion miles of roads each year.

YouTube:

• Feb 14, 2005: YouTube launched
• April 23, 2005:First video uploaded titled “Me at the zoo”
• June 2007: YouTube launched in 9 countries
• October 2009: YouTube witnesses one billion daily video views
• Jan 2012: YouTube crosses four billion daily video views
• 2012: First video to hit one-billion views (PSY_Gangnam Style)
• 2015:
  • YouTube is localized in 75 countries and available in 61 languages
  • YouTube has more than 1 billion users
  • 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
  • Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views
  • Half of YouTube views are on mobile devices
  • The number of hours people are watching on YouTube each month is up 50% year over year

© Technuter.com News Service