FAQGO.com

This month in 1998, the Internet God known as Google was launched.

Since then it has become the most used search engine on the Web, with more than 135 million visitors in the U.S. alone and at least several hundred million searches a day.

So happy birthday Google!

However, if you want to be technical (ha, technical, Google, get it?) the exact day of the search engine superhero’s birth is a little unclear, and Google itself explains:

Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.

So all we need to know is when to celebrate! Almost certainly on September 27. But the real answer is way more complicated than that.

Google is actually nearly 13 years old if you go by their own corporate history page: “By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website.”

But if you go by when the Google.com domain name was registered, they’ll turn 11 on September 15.

However, the date Google celebrates as their birth month is September 1998. They celebrated on September 7, their date of incorporation, until 2005. Since 2005 (and also randomly in 2002), they’ve celebrated on September 27.

So why do they celebrate it on the 27th? According to Danny Sullivan, who wrote about this mess last year, they pushed the birthday date forward in 2005 to all for the announcement of a index size milestone.

At least Google is consistently inconsistent: “Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.”

So Happy 10th, 11th and/or almost 13th Birthday Google!

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