Thread by @JonErlichman

Google was founded this day in 1998.

Here’s a bit more on the journey. 🧵👇

Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met at Stanford.

Brin was a tour guide for Page, who was a new student:

Google was originally called BackRub.

Soon after, it was renamed Google.

The guys used Lego bricks to build a cabinet for their first server:

Their first investment in 1998 was a check for $100,000.

They couldn’t deposit it because they hadn’t set up a bank account.

But they celebrated at Burger King.

Here’s how Google was evolving:

The first office was in a garage.

They rented it from Google’s first marketing manager, Susan Wojcicki.

(she now runs YouTube)

They paid $1,700 a month in rent.

Here’s an early office video tour from the company’s 6th employee:

This was the first production server rack:

Ruth Kedar designed Google’s logo.

These were the early iterations:

And, of course, you need business cards:

As for the Google Doodle?

It’s hard to take a break when you’re running a startup.

The first one was meant to be an out-of-office message when they went to the Burning Man festival.

Meanwhile, the team was growing…

They had moved out of the garage…

In 1999, Google had a few dozen employees. Staff meetings included birthday cakes, beer and silly string:

The world’s curiosity about Google continued to grow…

Here’s Sergey explaining Google search in 2001:

Meanwhile, winning the search wars would require Google to lead the way in mobile search…

Anyone remember this?

Google went public in 2004 at a valuation of $23 billion.

here’s a report from that day:

“most of Wall St wanted this to fail”

Also in 2004…the launch of Gmail.

Google Maps launched the next year:

Also in 2005? The acquisition of Android…

And in 2006? The acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion…

Chrome would come in 2008…

And in 2015… a new parent company name, Alphabet:

We could keep going here, but this 2002 clip from Larry Page sums it up…

To do something different, have a “healthy disregard for the impossible”: