Google was founded in 1998 by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their search project grew from research conducted at Stanford University and became one of Silicon Valley’s most influential technology companies.
Page and Brin initially developed a search engine called BackRub. Its ranking system used links between web pages as a signal of importance, helping distinguish Google from many early search engines that relied heavily on keyword matching and manually maintained directories.
The founders incorporated Google on September 4, 1998. The company later moved from early offices and a garage setting into a much larger operation in Mountain View, where its campus became closely associated with modern technology-company culture.
A common mix-up is saying Google began as a Yahoo product. Yahoo was an earlier internet company and directory, but Google was independently created by Page and Brin at Stanford.