• Source:JND
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Google was 27 on September 27, 2025, and celebrated the milestone with a doodle that revisited its original logo from 1998. The throwback wordmark welcomed users on the homepage, giving a nostalgic glimpse of the company's humble beginnings when it was just a young search engine.

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford PhD students, Google started in a California garage and grew into one of the most powerful tech firms globally. Today, billions of individuals use its services, from Gmail and Google Maps to the Chrome browser and YouTube.

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But prior to it becoming a name known to every household, Google had a rather different image. The project was originally named "BackRub" in 1996, a reference to how it examined web links. One year later, Page and Brin desired a name that showed the vast size of information the engine could coordinate. That's when a serendipitous accident resulted in the development of "Google".

The word itself originated from "googol", a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. When Stanford graduate student Sean Anderson was looking for available domains, he mistakenly typed "Google" instead of "Googol". Page preferred the misspelled version, and in a matter of hours google.com was taken.

Interestingly, despite the fact that the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, Google has been marking its birthday on September 27 since the mid-2000s. The date was picked out because it commemorates a milestone related to the fast development of its search index, which is an indicator of how fast the platform grew in its early days.

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And now, 27 years on, the celebratory doodle is a tribute to both Google's worldwide influence and its modest beginnings. From a humble garage in Menlo Park to driving the world digital, Google's story is one of how innovation, timing, and even a basic typo can rewrite history.