Company Profile

Google India Pvt. Limited

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Our company has packed a lot into a relatively young life. Since Google was founded in 1998, we’ve grown to serve hundreds of thousands of users and customers around the world. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995. By 1996, they had built a search engine (initially called BackRub) that used links to determine the importance of individual webpages.

When Larry Met Sergey

• Founded
  1998
• Founders

  Larry Page and Sergey Brin
• Incorporation 
  September 4, 1998
• Initial public offering (NASDAQ) 
  August 19, 2004
• Headquarters 
  1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
  Mountain View
  CA 94043

Larry and Sergey named the search engine they built “Google,” a play on the word “googol,” the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google Inc. was born in 1998, when Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to that entity—which until then didn’t exist.

The first “Google doodle” in 1998 was intended to let visitors to the homepage know that Google’s minders were offline at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. There’s now a team of “doodlers” and we’ve posted more than 1,000 different doodles on homepages worldwide.

In 2000, Google introduced AdWords, a self-service program for creating online ad campaigns. Today our advertising solutions, which include display, mobile and video ads as well as the simple text ads we introduced more than a decade ago, help thousands of businesses grow and be successful.

On April Fools' Day in 2004, we launched Gmail. Our approach to email included features like speedy search, huge amounts of storage and threaded messages.

Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock took place on Wall Street on August 18, 2004.

We acquired digital mapping company Keyhole in 2004, and launched Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005. Today Maps also features live traffic, transit directions and street-level imagery, and Earth lets you explore the ocean and the moon.

In 2006, we acquired online video sharing site YouTube. Today 60 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. Cat videos, citizen journalism, political candidacy and double rainbows have never been the same.

Amidst rumors of a “Gphone,” we announced Android—an open platform for mobile devices—and the Open Handset Alliance, in 2007.

Word got out about Google Chrome a day ahead of schedule when a comic book introducing our new open source browser was shipped earlier than planned. We officially launched on September 2, 2008.

Larry Page, Google’s original CEO until 2001, took up the title again in April 2011. Eric Schmidt, now our executive chairman, served in the role for 10 years.

The people behind Google

Building great products depends on great people. There are more than 30,000 Googlers behind the tools that you use every day—from search to Chrome. Find out more about what it’s like to work at Google, where we work and who drives our company strategy below:

Our culture

It’s really the people that make Google the kind of company it is. We hire people who are smart and determined, and we favor ability over experience. Although Googlers share common goals and visions for the company, we hail from all walks of life and speak dozens of languages, reflecting the global audience that we serve. And when not at work, Googlers pursue interests ranging from cycling to beekeeping, from frisbee to foxtrot.

We strive to maintain the open culture often associated with startups, in which everyone is a hands-on contributor and feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. In our weekly all-hands (“TGIF”) meetings—not to mention over email or in the cafe—Googlers ask questions directly to Larry, Sergey and other execs about any number of company issues. Our offices and cafes are designed to encourage interactions between Googlers within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play.

Google locations

We’ve come a long way from the dorm room and the garage. We moved into our headquarters in Mountain View, California—better known as the Googleplex—in 2004. Today Google has more than 70 offices in more than 40 countries around the globe.

Though no two Google offices are the same, visitors to any office can expect to find a few common features: murals and decorations expressing local personality; Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and "huddles"; video games, pool tables and pianos; cafes and "microkitchens" stocked with healthy food; and good old fashioned whiteboards for spur-of-the-moment brainstorming.