September 27, 1998 – The (Sort of) Birthday of Google, Inc.

When I chose September 27 to investigate for engineering developments of historical import, I was surprised to find Google’s birthday on the list. Why the search engine’s birthday felt like something I should be familiar with, I don’t know. (Perhaps it’s that Google seems to know and remember so much about me – like my birthday, for instance.) In any case, my deep dive into Google’s history and its birthday grew even more perplexing.

While Google has been celebrating its birthday with a Google Doodle on September 27 since 2006, that day seems to be of no real significance to the company. Evidently, the tech giant’s FAQ once famously indicated: “the exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having a cake.”

So, on the day Google has more recently chosen, let’s examine the days that really are part of engineering history:

1995 — Google, Inc. founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, meet at Stanford.

January 1996 — Google (then named BackRub) began as Larry Page’s doctoral thesis that eventually became a concept for tracking and ranking web listings by the number of other sites they linked to, much as including more citations within an academic work added weight.

September 15, 1997 — Google registered the web domain www.google.com.

August 1998 — Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Page and Brin a check for $100,000 “and Google, Inc. was officially born.”

September 4, 1998 — Google, Inc. was officially incorporated.

September 27, 2002 — Google’s 4^th birthday, or at least the day it was celebrated by Google Doodle.

September 8, 2003 — Google’s 5^th birthday

September 7, 2004 — Google’s 6^th birthday

September 26, 2005 — Google’s 7^th birthday, when the company appears to have made the jump to back the end of the month.

September 27, 2006 … 2016 — Google’s 8^th through 18^th birthdays.

Interestingly, while Google doesn’t have a Doodle in its archive for its 1^st through 3^rd birthdays, the first Google Doodle appeared before Google even became incorporated on August 30, 1998. The doodle was a sort of “Out of Office” indicator to note that during that last week of August, Brin and Page spent their time at the Burning Man Festival. The second doodle [celebrated?] Bastille Day in 2000.

And, while Google’s first few birthday doodles (2002-2005) don’t settle on a date, the doodles, as well as those up until Google’s 12^th birthday in 2010, do share a very similar style that didn’t differ much from the ordinary Google logo.