Today Google is celebrating its 12th birthday with a special doodle on Google.com. The Google Logo – Happy 12th Birthday Google image by Wayne Thiebaud is used with permission of VAGA NY.

Google Inc.is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the “Google Guys”, while the two were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. The company’s stated mission from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and the company’s unofficial slogan — coined by Google engineer Paul Buchheit — is Don’t be evil. In 2006, the company moved to their current headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world, and processes over one billion search requests and twenty petabytes of user-generated data every day. Google’s rapid growth since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond the company’s core search engine. The company offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail e-mail software, and social networking tools, including Orkut and, more recently, Google Buzz. Google’s products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as the web browser Google Chrome, the Picasa photo organization and editing software, and the Google Talk instant messaging application. More notably, Google leads the development of the Android mobile phone operating system, used on a number of phones such as the Nexus One and Motorola Droid. Because of its popularity and numerous products, Alexa lists Google as the Internet’s most visited website. Google is also Fortune Magazine’s fourth best place to work,and BrandZ’s most powerful brand in the world.The dominant market position of Google’s services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright, and censorship.

Google’s 12th birthday celebration. Check out our interactive timeline, Project 10 to the 100, and stories about Google.

Google Milestones

1995

• Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

1996

• Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
• BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year — eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997

• Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google — a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

1998

August

• Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn’t exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September

• Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
• Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company’s name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim’s check.
• Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he’s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December

• “PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

Read full Google Milestones