Category · 16 records
Company and acquisitions
The company's path as an organization: investments, offices, hires, reorganizations and acquisitions. This is where the events that changed Google's structure live, with announcement, closing and integration dates recorded separately.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsCraig Silverstein, the first employee
1998 — Craig Silverstein, Page and Brin's fellow PhD student at Stanford, was the first employee hired by the new company in 1998.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsAndy Bechtolsheim's US$100,000 check
August 1998 — In August 1998 Andy Bechtolsheim, a Sun Microsystems co-founder, wrote a US$100,000 check to Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsThe Menlo Park garage, Google's first office
September 1998 — After the August 1998 investment, the new company moved from Stanford dorms to the garage of a house in Menlo Park, California.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle Inc. is incorporated
September 4, 1998 — Google Inc.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsThe move to Palo Alto
February 1999 — In early 1999, with about eight employees and 500,000 searches a day, Google left the Menlo Park garage for 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, a building known for housing other Silicon Valley startups.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsThe US$25 million round and the first press release
June 7, 1999 — On June 7, 1999, Google announced a US$25 million round led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, with Michael Moritz and John Doerr joining the board.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle buys Deja.com's Usenet archive (2001)
February 12, 2001 — The purchase brought the Usenet archive kept by Deja.com, along with software, trademarks and the deja.com and dejanews.com domains.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsEric Schmidt becomes Google's CEO (2001)
August 6, 2001 — Eric Schmidt, who had led Novell since 1997, joined Google's board as chairman in March 2001 and was named CEO in August.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle buys Pyra Labs, maker of Blogger (2003)
February 13, 2003 — Pyra Labs, a six-person San Francisco company, ran Blogger and Blogspot.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle buys Applied Semantics (2003)
April 23, 2003 — Applied Semantics made software for online ads, domain names and information management.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle goes public on Nasdaq (2004)
April 29, 2004 — In 2004 Google went public through a Dutch auction.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle buys Picasa, the photo organizer (2004)
July 13, 2004 — Picasa, based in Pasadena, California, made a program for organizing and sharing digital photos and already had a partnership with Blogger for publishing images.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsGoogle arrives in Brazil: Akwan, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo (2005)
July 20, 2005 — Google's Brazilian operation began in Minas Gerais: in July 2005 the company bought Akwan Information Technologies, a Belo Horizonte firm founded by computer science professors at UFMG, the Federal University of Minas Gerais.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsLarry Page becomes Google's CEO again (2011)
January 20, 2011 — Along with its fourth-quarter 2010 results, Google announced a change at the top: Larry Page would take over as CEO on April 4, 2011, running day-to-day operations; Eric Schmidt, CEO since 2001, would become executive chairman, focused on external deals and governments; and Sergey Brin would devote himself to strategic projects.
- Google Museum
Organization › Company and acquisitionsAlphabet is born, and Google becomes one of its companies (2015)
August 10, 2015 — In August 2015 Larry Page announced the creation of Alphabet, a new company that took control of Google and of projects far from the core business, such as Calico, X and the investment arms.
- Google Museum
Event › Company and acquisitionsSundar Pichai also becomes Alphabet's CEO (2019)
December 3, 2019 — Four years after creating Alphabet, the founders left their executive roles.