Seems everyone in the blogosphere has made comment on Google turning 10 years old.

So keeping with tradition Google had a spacial logo for their big day.Google has had an interesting and diverse history as shown in their timeline. 

However i have picked out a few key points below, and want have a small scratch at the surface of what Google has and is doing.

Here comes Google!

On 15th September 1997, the Google name first comes to light, Larry and Sergey decided the original name (BackRub) needed a new name.

After a while they came upon googol, which is a mathematical term for the number 1^100 (1 with 100 zeros after it), as this represents their goal of organising what is an infinite amount of information.

- Just take a look at the original Google homepage! 

And the money starts…

In 1998 Google received its first cheque for $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun Co-Founder. This was before the guys had even properly set Google up as an incorporate or even had a Google bank account!

April Fools

Ever since their first joke in 2000 when Google announced MentalPlex, which boldly claimed Google could now read your mind and produce the perfect search results – all you have to do is stare at the swirly circle…

And of course, it didn’t stop with reading your mind! In 2002 Google explained the advanced technology behind how exactly PageRank (or PigeonRank) actually worked… a whole lot of trained pigeons finding you great results.

In 2004 Google went even futher and expanded to yet another location, the Moon and best of all they needed you to staff it. – Lunar Job Offers

Over the years Google has been quite the comedian with instructions on Google Maps which included “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean” (now removed) if you asked for directions from North America to a location in Europe.

Gmail Paper Archive, where Google will print and post your emails and attachment for free and Tisp, the Toilet ISP from 2007 being one of the ones which really makes me laugh as i look back.

More recently (2008) of course there is Virgle, when Virgin and Google team up to take us all to live on Mars… Yes, Mars.

The application form on the site alone can really make you laugh, with questions like I am a world-class expert in – physics, medicine and first aid, engineering or Guitar Hero II.

But thanks to Google now owning YouTube.com they joined in the fun too by bringing a new term in the blogosphere, RickRolling where on April 1st where all featured videos on YouTube instead lead to the Rick Astley music video – Never Gonna Give You Up, i bet the video uploader was thrilled!

The list goes on with each new wakey idea topping the last, and i can honestly say i look forward to April the 1st, just to see what Google might do next.

Reference: Wikipedia on Google’s Hoaxes

I name you Google

No I am not talking about Google Inc, an “avid” Google “enthusiast” Elias Kai decided to name his new bored son Oliver Google Kai.

Google Tops 1 Billion

26th June 2000 Google Index hits 1 Billion pages (URL’s) indexed, and in the beginning of 2006 Google’s Image Search tops 1.1 Billion Images indexed.

What doesn’t Google own?

 Over the past ten years Google has become massive with the acquisition of companies/sites like Blogger.com, YouTube.com (9th October 2006), Keyhole (a digital mapping company), Urchin – a web analytics company which is behind Google Analytics technology,  Writely a web-based word processing app which is the basis for Google Docs (9th March 2006), and this year even google completed their deal with DoubleClick (the online advertising company), JotSpot which was a collaborative wiki platform which has now become Google Sites, dMarc which was a DAB advertising company and so many more, Google is taking on many different aspects of online markets, but is this good? – Leave a comment, or send us an email with your views.

Googles founders have become very rich men in a relatively short period of time, and have built up a company which is now one of if not the largest online companies in the world, with ever expanding resources and developments, such as the newly released Google Chrome browser, which Google has made to try and improve all browsers to make the web a better place, with its (currently) unique V8 Javascript engine and interesting architecture they are transforming (and controlling?) our lives, with search, adverts, email online video with YouTube and a whole lot more available from Google, will the small guys be able to hold out much longer? 

Google is doing and has done so much for technology, and it shows what billions of dollars can achieve, but I, as always, am interested in your views on Google what do you like/dislike?

Take a look at:

 - http://www.google.co.uk/tenthbirthday/