How Old Is Google? Founding Date, Age, and the Story Behind the World’s Biggest Search Engine
Google is 27 years old in 2025. The company was officially founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin — two Stanford University PhD students who believed a better way to search the internet was possible. What started as a research project in a university dorm room has since grown into one of the most influential companies in human history.
If you’ve ever wondered how old is Google, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most commonly searched questions on the internet, and the answer is both simple and fascinating once you know the full story.
How Old Is Google Today?
As of 2025, Google is 27 years old. The company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, which means it celebrates its official birthday every year on the 4th of September.
To answer the question directly:
- Founded: September 4, 1998
- Age in 2025: 27 years old
- Headquarters: Mountain View, California, USA
- Parent company (since 2015): Alphabet Inc.
Every year, Google tends to mark its birthday with a special Google Doodle on its homepage — a tradition that has become one of the most anticipated moments for the company’s millions of daily users worldwide.
It is worth noting that Google’s birthday has occasionally been listed as different dates — September 27 has appeared in some years — but the company’s official incorporation date remains September 4, 1998, and that is the date most widely recognized as the founding.
When Was Google Founded? The Exact Date
Google was officially incorporated on September 4, 1998, in Menlo Park, California. However, the story of its founding actually begins a couple of years earlier at Stanford University.
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin began working together on a research project called BackRub — a search engine that ranked web pages based on the number of other sites linking to them. That concept, which they called PageRank, became the intellectual foundation for everything Google would eventually build.
By 1997, BackRub had been renamed Google — a play on the mathematical term “googol,” meaning the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflected their ambition: to organize the virtually infinite amount of information available on the web.
The following year, on September 4, 1998, Page and Brin officially incorporated Google Inc., opening their first office in a rented garage in Menlo Park, California. The garage belonged to Susan Wojcicki, who would later become the CEO of YouTube.
Who Founded Google and Where?
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both doctoral students at Stanford University in California. Page, originally from Michigan, and Brin, who was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States as a child, met at Stanford in 1995.
Their complementary skills — Page’s focus on data structure and Brin’s strength in data mining — made them an unusually effective research partnership. Within three years of meeting, they had built a search engine that was already handling 10,000 search queries per day.
From a Dorm Room Project to a Global Company
The early days of Google were genuinely scrappy. Page and Brin initially ran their search engine on servers they had assembled from cheap computer parts and installed in Page’s dorm room. Their first major investor was Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, who wrote them a check for $100,000 before they had even officially incorporated the company.
By the time Google launched publicly, word of mouth was already spreading. The simplicity of Google’s clean white homepage — a stark contrast to the cluttered portals of the era — made it immediately popular with users who were frustrated with existing search engines.
How Old Is Google Maps?
While the question of how old is Google tends to focus on the company itself, many people are specifically curious about one of its most important products: Google Maps.
Google Maps was officially launched on February 8, 2005, making it 20 years old in 2025.
The product was developed by a team that Google acquired from a Danish startup called Where 2 Technologies in 2004. Combined with satellite imagery technology from another acquisition, Keyhole Inc. — which later became Google Earth — Google Maps quickly became the world’s most used digital mapping service.
What Made Google Maps Revolutionary?
When Google Maps launched, it introduced interactive, draggable maps to the general web for the first time. Before that, online maps were static images that required the page to reload every time a user moved. Google Maps changed that entirely and redefined how people navigate, travel, and explore their surroundings.
Today, Google Maps is used by over one billion people every month and remains one of Google’s most valuable products, having expanded far beyond navigation to include street view imagery, local business listings, real-time traffic, and transit directions.
Google’s Key Milestones Over the Years
Understanding how old Google is becomes far more interesting when you look at what the company actually accomplished across those 27 years. Here are some of the most significant moments in Google’s history:
- 1998 — Google is incorporated; the first data center runs in a dorm room
- 2000 — Google AdWords launches, establishing the foundation of its business model
- 2001 — Eric Schmidt joins as CEO; Google reaches its first billion URLs indexed
- 2004 — Google goes public (IPO) on the NASDAQ at $85 per share; Gmail launches
- 2005 — Google Maps launches; Google acquires Android Inc.
- 2006 — Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion
- 2007 — The first Android smartphone is announced
- 2008 — Google Chrome browser launches
- 2012 — Google’s market cap crosses $250 billion
- 2015 — Google restructures under Alphabet Inc., with Sundar Pichai becoming Google CEO
- 2016 — Google Assistant is introduced
- 2023 — Google launches Bard (later renamed Gemini), its AI-powered assistant in response to the rise of large language models
- 2025 — Google turns 27, still commanding over 90% of the global search market
When Does Google Celebrate Its Birthday?
Google officially celebrates its birthday on September 4, though in some years the company has marked September 27 as the date instead. The inconsistency is largely historical — September 4 is the incorporation date, while September 27 appears to have been used in some early years as a reference to when Google.com was registered as a domain.
Today, September 4 is the most widely recognized and cited birthday. Google typically marks the occasion with a custom Doodle on its homepage.
How Has Google Changed the World?
Few companies in any era have changed daily life as comprehensively as Google has in its 27 years of existence. What began as a way to search for websites now shapes how billions of people access information, communicate, navigate, consume media, and work.
Some of the most significant ways Google has changed the world include:
- Democratizing access to information — Google Search made it possible for anyone with an internet connection to find almost any piece of knowledge in seconds
- Redefining advertising — Google’s advertising platform transformed digital marketing and created an entirely new industry
- Shaping mobile technology — Android, which Google acquired in 2005 and launched commercially in 2008, now powers over 70% of the world’s smartphones
- Mapping the planet — Google Maps and Google Earth gave ordinary people satellite-level views of the world for the first time
- Advancing artificial intelligence — Google has been central to AI research for over a decade, and its investments in large language models continue to reshape the technology landscape
The company that started with two students and a $100,000 check is now valued at over a trillion dollars and employs more than 180,000 people globally.
Frequently Asked Questions About Google’s Age
How old is Google in 2025?
Google is 27 years old in 2025. It was founded on September 4, 1998.
How old is Google today?
As of September 2025, Google is 27 years old. Its official birthday is September 4, which means it completes another year on September 4 each year.
How old is Google Maps?
Google Maps is 20 years old in 2025. It was officially launched on February 8, 2005.
Was Google ever 18 years old?
Yes. Google turned 18 years old in 2016 — 18 years after its founding on September 4, 1998. That milestone year saw Google heavily invested in AI research and the continued growth of Android globally.
How old is the Google company today?
Google the company — officially known as Google LLC and operating under its parent company Alphabet Inc. — is 27 years old in 2025.
Who founded Google and when?
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on September 4, 1998, while both were doctoral students at Stanford University in California.
When did Google become Alphabet?
In August 2015, Google reorganized its corporate structure to create Alphabet Inc. as its parent holding company, with Google becoming one of several subsidiaries under that umbrella.
Final Thoughts
So, how old is Google? As of 2025, Google is 27 years old — a remarkable age for a company that has redefined nearly every aspect of modern digital life. From its origins as a Stanford research project in 1998 to its current status as one of the most valuable companies in the world, Google’s story is one of consistent innovation, extraordinary growth, and lasting global impact.
Whether you were looking for a quick number or the full history behind it, the answer now goes well beyond “27.” Google’s age is really a measure of just how much can change in less than three decades