Google is turning 27 today and taking users on a walk down memory lane to mark the occasion with its iconic first-ever search engine logo.
The world’s best-known search engine has stepped back in time for one day to feature its original logo nearly three decades ago, providing those old enough to remember it a dose of nostalgia.
The OG logo features the classic primary colours synonymous with Google’s image, and includes an explanation mark, which has since become obsolete.
Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998, so the reason behind marking its birthday on September remains a mystery, though a few theories have surfaced.
Why is the search engine’s birthday celebrated today?
The company, founded by Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was incorporated on September 4, 1998.
It’s first Google Doodle, the images and animations used to change the logo to commemorate important dates in the calendar, started before the company was incorporated.
The first Doodle showed a stick figure standing behind the second ‘O’, which the founders used as a creative way to tell their colleagues they would be ‘out of office’ attending the Burning Man Festival.
This was published on Google on August 30, 1998.
September 27 appears to have stuck through chance, because that’s the date when the company first celebrated its birthday, back in 2002.
Since then, national holidays across the world, birthdays of famous figures and the anniversaries of major events such as the moon landings have all been marked with a doodle.
Google controversies
Being one of the largest search engines used globally, it is unsurprising the tech giant has been under intense scrutiny since its conception.
The UK trade watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has been investigating Google on whether it has too much power, saying it is a ‘key gateway into the internet’ and may need to loosen its control.
Being the go-to place for all of our queries and burning questions, Google’s algorithms allow it to auto-generate some of our search results.
However, the company faced huge backlash after it was reported that a search in the UK asking if the Holocaust happened returned results from a white supremacist website.
As a result, the internet giant removed all Holocaust denial websites from its search results.
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