Happy Birthday Google!

Let's take a walk down memory lane and see what Google has been up to since it was just a wee little search engine (pinching cheeks).

• You can get a great history of Google straight from the horse's mouth at Google Milestones. Includes information all the way back to 1995. Google's official start was in September of 1998, when they got a Huge Check in order to keep going.
• Google Guide's Feature History: Very nice chronological timeline of what feature Google has come up with when.
• Google Press Releases, lots and lots of stuff here to read. All the way back to 1999.
• Key dates in the history of Google from Forbes; you might have to change your text viewing options to see this article (it was wonky in Firefox), but it's worth the time.
• Wikipedia's Google information is interesting; includes information on the three guys at the top, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch gives a succint summary of the history of Google, and points out rightly that Google is by no means the oldest search engine or directory out there. "Though Google is one of the most popular search engines today, it's far from the oldest. Yahoo! is nearly ten, and AltaVista, Inktomi and Lycos are also comparative old-timers." He also gives a great link to the way Google used to look in 1998.
• Working Papers Concerning the Creation of Google: Ready for a little light reading? Then you'll want to check out Computing Iceberg Queries Efficiently, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, or Dynamic Data Mining: Exploring Large Rule Spaces by Sampling.
• Here's The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine(1998) in CiteSeer view. Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page are listed as the authors. This includes a summary of the article, then lists other theses, white papers, and similar documents that either have linked to this particular paper, cited it in some way, or are similar in content.
• Test your newfound knowledge of Google with the Google Quiz, although if you read all those scientific papers you'll find it to be child's play.