In honor of Google’s 13th birthday, the search engine has replaced its official logo on its homepage with a birthday party scene. The Google logo is surrounded by multi-colored balloons and streamers, and is fitted with party hats. It’s seated behind a table filled with wrapped presents and a large white birthday cake, which is topped with 13 candles.
When the doddle is clicked, more information about the launch of Google is loaded. The search engine was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University graduate students. The two built their first search engine in 1996, but it wasn’t until 1998 that they formalized their work and created Google.
The company filed for incorporation on September 4, 1998. On September 15, Google.com was registered, but the search engine celebrates its official launch on September 27.
The name Google was created as a play on the word googol, a mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The company says the name “reflects the immense volume of information that exists and the scope of Google’s mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
The anniversary comes comes as Google is in an intense rivalry with Facebook. Nielsen shows that US internet users spend the most amount of time on Facebook, so Google recently launched is own social network service to all users, Google+. However, Google has a 90 percent share of the global internet search market.
Written by: Karen Benardello
