12. YEAR MONTH EVENT 1995 March Sergey Brin and Larry Page meet at a Stanford University spring gathering of Ph.D. computer science candidates. 1996 Jan-Dec Brin and Page create BackRub, the precursor to the Google search engine. 1998 September Google is incorporated and takes up residence in a Menlo Park, Calif., garage with four employees, after Brin and Page put their studies on hold and raise $1 million in funding from family, friends and "angel" investors. Google answers 10,000 search queries per day. 1999 Feb-June $25 million in funding from venture capital funds Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; eight employees; Google answers 500,000 searches per day. 2000 May-June Google, answering 18 million search queries a day, becomes the largest search engine on the Web. Internet media company Yahoo picks Google as its default search results provider. 2001 March-April Eric Schmidt , CEO of Novell and a former chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, joins Google as chairman. July-August Schmidt is appointed CEO while Page becomes president, products and Brin becomes president, technology. September Google announces that it has achieved profitability.
13. 2002 Jan- Feb Google announces the availability of “Google Search Appliance”. March Google launches a beta version of Google News, which provides news stories from numerous global providers. Nov. – Dec. Web index now includes 4 billion web documents. 2003 Jan – Feb Google acquires Pyra Labs, creator of the Web self-publishing tool Blogger. May – June Google launches Ad Sense, an advertising program that delivers ads based on the content of Web sites. 2004 March – April Gmail, a free web based email service is launched. July Google acquires Picasa, Inc. a digital photo management company. August IPO of “GOOG” on NASDAQ at $85 per share, raising $1.7 billion. November Google search index is now 8 billion pages 2005 March “ Google Maps” is launched. July GOOG share price passes $300 and becomes the world’s largest media by market value of approximate $85 bn.