Internet giant Google is celebrating its 18th birthday on September 27 and to mark anniversary, released a balloon art-themed doodle GIF.
That said, Google's birthday is a bit confusing, as the company has changed its date of official launch several times since it went live in 1998. The search engine giant first chose September 27 as its birth day in 2002 and released the first doodle to commemorate it.
But, in the following years-- 2003, 2004 and 2005- Google, for reasons unknown changed it birth date to September 7, 8 and 24, respectively.
In 2006, the company once again changed the date back to September 27 and thankfully, it has remained constant till today.
Origin of Google:
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the Google domain on September 15 in 1997 and officially got incorporated on September 4 in 1998.
For those unaware, the name Google is actually a misspelled word 'Googol' coined by American mathematician E. Kasner—meaning one followed by 100 zeros. This huge numerical figure matched the Stanford-educated Larry and Sergey's pet project to build large database to accommodate large swathes of information.
View: Google's past birthday doodles
Since its inception in 1998, Google has grown bigger with each year, as it diversified its operation by providing productivity software (Gmail), social network service (Google+), mobile OS (Android), hardware (Pixel & Nexus) and several other products.
Last year, Page and Sergey re-organised the company by launching parent firm Alphabet and made Google its subsidiary. Currently, it is managed by new CEO Sundar Pichai and has a market value more than $450 billion.
Read more: Meet Chennai-Born Sundar Pichai, the New CEO of Google Inc
