In the mid-1990s, the internet was a chaotic, disorganized place. Finding useful information was a major challenge. At Stanford University, two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a revolutionary idea. They believed they could create a better search engine by analyzing the relationships between websites.

Their project, nicknamed "BackRub," ranked websites based on how many other sites linked to them. The more links a page had, the more important it was deemed to be. This was a radical departure from existing search engines, which simply ranked results based on how often a term appeared on a page.

The project quickly outgrew Stanford's servers. In 1998, with a $100,000 investment, Page and Brin officially founded Google Inc. in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.

From the beginning, Google had a clear and powerful goal.

This mission was reflected in the company's name. "Google" is a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number one followed by 100 zeros. It captured the immense scale of the founders' ambition.

This guiding principle pushed the company to continually innovate, ensuring that its search results were not only comprehensive but also highly relevant to what users were looking for.

Google's growth from a garage startup to a global powerhouse was marked by several pivotal moments.

These steps weren't just about adding new products. They represented a continuous evolution of how Google approached its core mission, expanding from organizing web pages to organizing everything from emails and videos to the world's geographical information.

Each milestone built upon the last, cementing Google's role as a fundamental part of the digital landscape. Let's test your knowledge on Google's origins.

From a university research project to a household name, Google's story is a cornerstone of the modern internet. Its initial focus on organizing information has blossomed into a vast ecosystem of tools that shape how we work, play, and learn.