Remember a time when we had to do homework without Google? I don't want to think about it.
Thankfully, it's 2016 and our Lord and Savior gives us the answers to everything x 100,000. But there's one thing it still can't tell us -- its own birthday.
Your homepage today is taken up by a celebratory Google doodle.
That's because it's Google's 18th birthday! If it were a real person, Google would be legal to have sexual relations with that rascal Ask Jeeves.
However, the exact date of the search engine's big day is unclear. If you Google "Google's birthday," it brings up today's date (September 27).
But in a contradictory bio to the right, it states the firm was founded on September 4, 1998.
A dive into Google's history only raises more questions.
The firm was registered as a domain on September 15, 1997, so isn't it actually 19 years old?
In fact, looking at the company's past, there doesn't seem to be anything of significance relating to September 27.
Google's History
Its website states,
1995: Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. Larry, 22, a U Michigan graduate, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around. 1996: Larry and Sergey begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. BackRub has been operating on Stanford servers for more than a year – eventually taking up too much bandwidth. 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.
One year later, however, the firm filed for incorporation. This happened on September 4.
On September 4, Google files for incorporation in California. Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's cheque.
Cool, we're all still majorly confused. But happy birthday or whatever.
