Google 10th birthday timeline

It's hard to believe that it was just 10 years ago that the Google search engine first hit the web, such is the company's dominance of the internet now.

Google - 10 years in pictures (20 pictures):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2008/sep/04/google.google?picture=337312164

Here Web User takes a look at some of the significant events in the search company's history.

Timeline

1995
· Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford University

1996
· Now computer-science students, Page and Brin begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub, named for its ability to analyse website backlinks for relevance

· The first version of Google is released on the Stanford University website in August

1997:
· Google.com is registered

1998
· An unincorporated Google Inc receives its first investment: $100,000 (£56,000) from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim

· Google sets up a workspace in a garage in Silicon Valley

· Google files for incorporation in California, granted on September 7 - now celebrated as Google's birthday

1999
· Google outgrows its garage office and moves to an office with eight employees

· The company gets $25m of venture capital and moves to Mountain View

2000
· The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish

· Does a deal with Yahoo to become its default search provider

· Google becomes the world's largest search engine with the first billion-URL index

2001
· In its first public acquisition Google buys Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500m discussions dating back to 1995

· Eric Schmidt becomes chairman, then chief executive

· Page and Brin are appointed presidents of products and technology, respectively

2002
· Major partnership with AOL

· Google News launched, with 4,000 sources
2003
· American Dialect Society members vote "google" the most useful word of the year for 2002

· Acquires Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger

2004
· Gmail launched

· Google goes public: IPO at $85 a share

· Partnerships announced with leading libraries and universities to digitally scan millions of books from their collections

2005
· Google Maps and Google Earth launched, a satellite imagery-based mapping service, followed by Google Talk

2006
· Google goes live in China

· Acquires video-sharing site YouTube
2007
· Street View in Google Maps debuts in five US cities

· Acquires DoubleClick, an online advertising company

2008
· New Yahoo partnership announced

· Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time

· Belgian newspapers push for up to €49m (£39.4m) in damages from Google for publishing and storing their content without paying or asking permission

· Surprise launch of new web browser Chrome in September