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First Friends NewsletterLarry launches a monthly “Google Friends Newsletter” on eGroups to inform fans about company news (it’s still published, on Google Groups).
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First InvestorSun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn’t exist yet – a company called Google Inc.
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First EmployeeLarry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he’s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.
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Funded Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing “Googlers” as “people who use Google.”
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We drop the exclamation mark from our name and add a link for searches limited to U.S. government documents.
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New LanguagesThe first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.
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Webby'sWe win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).
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1 BillionGoogle becomes the world’s largest search engine; we announce the first billion-URL index.
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AdWordsGoogle AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.
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ToolbarGoogle Toolbar is released – a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.
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Image Searchmage Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.
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We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
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Google NewsExtra! Extra! Google News launches with 4000 news sources.
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American Dialect Society members vote “google” the “most useful” Word of the Year for 2002.
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AdSenseGoogle announces a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google’s vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)
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GmailLaunch Gmail on April Fool’s Day. (At the time, you needed an invitation to get an account.)
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MapsGoogle Maps goes live.
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Google EarthGoogle Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.
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AnalyticsRelease of Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.
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We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
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Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.
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Release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).
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Street ViewStreet View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.
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Right-to-LeftFor people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.
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FinanceReal-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.
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SearchWiki launches as a way for users to customize their own search experience by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Comments can also be read by other users.
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The Google Dashboard provides you with greater transparency and control over the data associated with your Google Account.
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TVGoogle announces Google TV, which is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. We’re busy at I/O this year, with a handful of other announcements and updates.
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Google+ Social Networking and Identity Service
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ModeratorThe White House holds an online town hall to answer citizens‘ questions submitted on Google Moderator.