What year was the Google search engine launched?

The Google search engine was launched in 1998. Its origins, however, go back to an earlier research project called BackRub, which Larry Page and Sergey Brin began at Stanford University in 1996.

The project became Google after Page and Brin developed a better way to rank web pages by examining links between them. Their PageRank system treated links as signals of importance, somewhat like citations in academic research. This approach helped Google produce useful results as the web rapidly expanded.

The Google.com domain was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was formally incorporated on September 4, 1998. That distinction explains why some timelines mention 1996 or 1997: those years refer to the research project and domain registration, not the official launch of the Google company and search service.

By the end of 1998, Google's index contained roughly 60 million web pages. Its uncluttered homepage and link-based ranking helped it stand out from portal-style competitors such as Yahoo, Excite, and Lycos.