To celebrate Google’s 19th Birthday, today’s ‘doodle’ is a Google Birthday Surprise Spinner that lets you explore 19 interactive things they’ve previously launched.

Google Turns 19 Today

They say life is full of surprises, and Google’s history is chock-full of them. In fact, we wouldn’t be here without them.

In 1997, one of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page, had just arrived at Stanford University to pursue his P.h.D in computer science. Of all the students on campus, Google’s other co-founder, Sergey Brin, was randomly assigned to show Page around. This chance encounter was the happy surprise that started it all.

From there, the two came together with a common goal in mind: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, a mantra that would go on to become Google’s mission statement. The two hunkered down in a garage – Google’s first office – and got to work.

Billions of searches later, perhaps the happiest happenstance has been how Google has grown throughout the past 19 years. Named for the number “googol” (a 1 followed by one hundred zeroes), Google inches closer to its namesake each year, currently serving more than 4.5 billion users in 160 countries speaking 123 languages worldwide.

Upon clicking today’s Doodle, they invite you to explore 19 surprises they’ve launched over the past 19 years – including their brand new Search easter egg: Snake Game!

So give it a spin and celebrate with Google!

Google Inc. is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabet’s leading subsidiary, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google; he replaced Larry Page, who became CEO of Alphabet.

The company’s rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networking (Google+), instant messaging and video chat (Google Allo/Duo), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and turn-by-turn navigation (Google Maps/Waze), video sharing (YouTube), notetaking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, it released multiple hardware products (including the Google Pixel smartphone, Home smart speaker, Wifi mesh wireless router, and Daydream View virtual reality headset). The new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated: “a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience”. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier. In February 2010, it announced Google Fiber, a fiber-optic infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015, it launched Project Fi in the United States, combining Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different providers; and in 2016, it announced the Google Station initiative to make public Wi-Fi available around the world, with initial deployment in India.

Founded: September 4, 1998, Menlo Park, California, United States
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
CEO: Sundar Pichai (Oct 2, 2015–)
Subsidiaries: YouTube, Nik Software, ITA Software, Google Japan, MORE
Founders: Larry Page, Sergey Brin
Parent organization: Alphabet Inc.