Google Search
Year First Appeared
1998
Creator
Larry Page, Sergey Brin
An exhibit tracing the evolution of Google Search from its origins in the late 1990s to today, highlighting milestones like Universal Search, quick answers, and AI-driven advances that help people find information faster.
Importance in Internet Culture
Google transformed how humanity accesses information. Founded on September 4, 1998, its PageRank algorithm brought relevance-based ranking to web search, displacing earlier directory and keyword-matching approaches. Google's rise defined the commercial internet's second era and made googling a universal verb.
Interesting Fact
The project began in 1996 as BackRub, running on Stanford servers. The domain google.com was registered September 15, 1997. The name Google is a play on googol (10^100), reflecting the founders' mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information.