Google

Domain registration

Jan 1, 1997

Google.com is registered as a domain on September 15. The name—a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros—reflects Larry and Sergey's mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

Bastille Day

Jul 1, 2000

Our first international doodle celebrates Bastille Day in France.

Google New York

Sep 17, 2000

Google New York starts in a Starbucks on 86th Street with a one-person sales "team." Today, more than 2,000 Googlers work in our New York office, a former Port Authority building at 111 Eighth Avenue. We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean—bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

Google AdWords

Oct 31, 2000

Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback. The first doodle by a guest artist, Lorie Loeb, goes live. Since then, many artists have lent their talents to the Google homepage, from Wayne Thiebaud to Christoph Niemann to Eric Carle.

Google Toolabr

Dec 31, 2000

Google Toolbar is released—a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

Google Images

Jul 20, 2001

Google Images launches, initially offering access to 250 million images.

Google News

Sep 20, 2002

Google News launches with 4,000 news sources. Today Google News includes 50,000+ news sources, with 70 regional editions in different languages. All told, Google News and other services send publishers 6 billion clicks per month as of 2012.

Google Shopping

Dec 1, 2002

With the launch of Froogle (which became Google Shopping in 2012), people can search for stuff to buy.

Google AdSense

Mar 1, 2003

We announce Google AdSense, a new content-targeted advertising service that enables publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (The following month, we acquire Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

Orkut

Jan 1, 2004

We launch Orkut, in its heyday the most important social network in several countries.

Gmail

Apr 9, 2004

We launch Gmail on April Fools' Day. At first invite-only, today it boasts more than 425 million users. Fun fact: our internal code name for Gmail was "Caribou," inspired by a Dilbert cartoon.