1) Google was founded in 1995 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as a search engine called BackRub while they were students at Stanford University. 2) They developed their search engine Google in 1997, taking its name from the mathematical term "googol" meaning the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. 3) Google quickly grew successful and profitable, entering the NASDAQ stock market in 2004 with stock prices reaching over $700 by 2007.