Google timeline, 2015–2019
Google became a company inside Alphabet, replaced its 1999 logo and began making its own devices, such as Pixel and Google Home. Artificial intelligence took center stage: AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, the Transformer paper was published, and the Assistant learned Portuguese in 2017. At the end of the period, Sundar Pichai took charge of Alphabet as well.
2015
- Google Museum
Product or service › Cloud and developersGoogle Domains, the domain registrar sold to Squarespace (2015–2023)
2015 — Google launched Google Domains in beta in 2015 and made it generally available in 26 countries on March 15, 2022.
- Google Museum
Product or service › Media and entertainmentGoogle Photos, free unlimited storage (2015)
May 28, 2015 — Introduced by Anil Sabharwal, Google Photos became a standalone product, with free unlimited backup of photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p.
- 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
Visual identity › Identity and cultureThe sans-serif logo of 2015
September 1, 2015 — A month after announcing Alphabet, Google introduced a sans-serif logo.
2016
- Google Museum
Event › AI and researchAlphaGo beats Lee Sedol at Go 4–1 (2016)
March 9, 2016 — Two years after Google bought it, DeepMind put its Go program, AlphaGo, against Lee Sedol, one of the world's top players, in a five-game series in Seoul from March 9 to 15, 2016.
- Google Museum
Prank › April FoolsMic Drop, the Gmail prank that backfired (2016)
April 1, 2016 — For April 1, 2016, Gmail got a Mic Drop button that sent a dismissive animation and closed the conversation for good.
- Google Museum
Product or service › AI and researchGoogle Assistant, the conversation with Google (2016)
May 18, 2016 — Sundar Pichai introduced the Google Assistant as an ongoing two-way dialogue between people and Google, meant to work across devices.
- Google Museum
Product or service › Communication and communityGoogle Allo, the messenger with the Assistant inside (2016–2019)
September 21, 2016 — Introduced on September 21, 2016 by Amit Fulay, Allo was the messaging app where Google Assistant debuted, as an English-only preview that could be called into a group chat with @google.
- Google Museum
Product or service › Advertising and businessGoogle Optimize, Google’s A/B testing tool (2016–2023)
September 29, 2016 — Google Optimize, with the paid Optimize 360 version, was used for A/B testing and website personalization.
- Google Museum
Hardware › HardwarePixel and the Made by Google line (2016)
October 4, 2016 — On October 4, 2016 Google introduced, under the Made by Google brand, its own line of devices: the Pixel and Pixel XL phones, the Google Home speaker at $129, the Daydream View VR headset at $79, the Google Wifi router and the 4K Chromecast Ultra.
- Google Museum
Product or service › HardwareJamboard, the Google Workspace digital whiteboard (2016–2024)
October 25, 2016 — Introduced on October 25, 2016, with general availability announced for May 2017, Jamboard was Google Workspace’s digital whiteboard, with an app and a 55-inch physical device.
2017
- Google Museum
Event › Cloud and developersGoogle's first cloud region in Latin America, in São Paulo (2017)
2017 — According to the Google Brazil blog, Google's first cloud region in Latin America opened in São Paulo in 2017, letting companies run workloads with low latency.
- Google Museum
Research paper › AI and researchAttention Is All You Need, the Transformer paper (2017)
June 12, 2017 — The paper by Ashish Vaswani and seven co-authors proposed the Transformer, a neural network architecture based solely on attention mechanisms, without recurrence or convolutions.
2018
- Google Museum
Event › AI and researchGoogle Duplex, the Assistant that phones for you (2018)
May 8, 2018 — In the Google I/O demo, the Assistant called a salon to book a haircut and handled the conversation with the person who answered, using pauses and filler sounds that sounded natural.
- Google Museum
Product or service › Media and entertainmentGoogle Podcasts, Google’s podcast app (2018–2024)
June 20, 2018 — Google Podcasts debuted as an Android app in June 2018, with recommendations and Google Assistant integration.
2019
- Google Museum
Product or service › Media and entertainmentStadia, Google's game streaming service (2019–2023)
2019 — Stadia ran games in the cloud and streamed them to the user's screen.
- 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.