Google Search Marks 25 Years: A Look Back

Google recently celebrated its 25th year in the search engine industry. Over a quarter of a century, Google Search has evolved with numerous features, making it easier for users to access the exact information they need.

Starting out as just another search engine, Google soon dominated the market with its superior algorithm that connected users to relevant information efficiently. Through time, it has continuously innovated, creating new methods to search, assisting businesses through search listings, introducing fun elements like Doodles and easter eggs, and so much more.

Key milestones in the journey of Google Search are below over the past 25 years:

• 2001: Launch of Google Images, inspired by a surge in search queries for Jennifer Lopez’s iconic Versace dress.
• 2001: Introduction of the “Did you mean?” feature, improving spelling corrections using machine learning.
• 2002: Google News debuts, providing real-time news to users.
• 2003: The first of many Easter eggs was hidden in Search.
• 2004: Autocomplete and local business information were added, facilitating user searches.
• 2006: Google Translate and Google Trends made their appearance, breaking language barriers and providing insight into search trends, respectively.
• 2007: Universal Search was introduced, collating results from multiple content types.
• 2008: Voice Search was launched on the Google Mobile App.
• 2009: Emergency hotlines, starting with poison control, began being prominently displayed in search results.
• 2011: Users could now use images as search queries with the Search by Image feature.
• 2012: The Knowledge Graph was launched, providing quick snapshots of information.
• 2015: Popular Times feature in Search and Maps was rolled out.
• 2016: Personalized content feed Discover was launched.
• 2017: Google Lens allowed visual searches.
• 2018: Flood forecasting system was developed.
• 2019: BERT was applied to Search for better language understanding.
• 2020: The Shopping Graph and Hum to Search features were introduced.
• 2021: “About this result” was added to provide context about search results.
• 2022: Multisearch allowed combined text and image searches.
• 2023: Search Labs and the Search Generative Experience (SGE) were introduced, with SGE leveraging generative AI in searches.

Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998, but in 2005, the company began celebrating its anniversary on September 27th. Why? The company says it was “to coincide with a public announcement that we were shifting away from showing how many pages we indexed.”

“At the time, the web and our index was growing rapidly, but we knew what really set Google apart was the quality of our results and our ability to help people quickly find what they were looking for. Over the years, we’ve maintained this focus on quality and delivering the most relevant and reliable information available,” said Google in a statement.

According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, there are 15 Google products today that “serve more than half a billion people and businesses, and six that serve more than 2 billion users each.” He also touched on how AI is going to be the next frontier.

“Still, there is so much more ahead. Over time, AI will be the biggest technological shift we see in our lifetimes. It’s bigger than the shift from desktop computing to mobile, and it may be bigger than the internet itself. It’s a fundamental rewiring of technology and an incredible accelerant of human ingenuity,” said Pichai.

“Making AI more helpful for everyone, and deploying it responsibly, is the most important way we’ll deliver on our mission for the next 10 years and beyond,” added the Google and Alphabet CEO.