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Period: to
1995
Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford University -
Period: to
1996
· Now computer-science students, Page and Brin begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub, named for its ability to analyse website backlinks for relevance · The first version of Google is released on the Stanford University website in August -
Period: to
1997
Google.com is registered -
Period: to
1998
· An unincorporated Google Inc receives its first investment: $100,000 (£56,000) from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim · Google sets up a workspace in a garage in Silicon Valley · Google files for incorporation in California, granted on September 7 - now celebrated as Google's birthda -
Period: to
1999
· Google outgrows its garage office and moves to an office with eight employees · The company gets $25m of venture capital and moves to Mountain View -
Period: to
2000
· The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish · Does a deal with Yahoo to become its default search provider · Google becomes the world's largest search engine with the first billion-URL index -
Period: to
2001
· In its first public acquisition Google buys Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500m discussions dating back to 1995 · Eric Schmidt becomes chairman, then chief executive · Page and Brin are appointed presidents of products and technology, respectively -
Period: to
2002
· Major partnership with AOL · Google News launched, with 4,000 sources -
Period: to
2003
· American Dialect Society members vote "google" the most useful word of the year for 2002 · Acquires Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger -
Period: to
2004
· Gmail launched · Google goes public: IPO at $85 a share · Partnerships announced with leading libraries and universities to digitally scan millions of books from their collections -
Period: to
2005
· Google Maps and Google Earth launched, a satellite imagery-based mapping service, followed by Google Talk -
Period: to
2006
· Google goes live in China · Acquires video-sharing site YouTube -
Period: to
2007
· Street View in Google Maps debuts in five US cities · Acquires DoubleClick, an online advertising company -
Period: to
2008
· New Yahoo partnership announced · Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time · Belgian newspapers push for up to €49m (£39.4m) in damages from Google for publishing and storing their content without paying or asking permission · Surprise launch of new web browser Chrome in September