We ring out the year with another Zeitgeist, our annual look at the most searched-for topics on Google.com. Plus, the top ten fastest-rising queries (each linked to results from the Google News Archive) show what’s on our minds:
We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.
Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.
We launch our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.
We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google’s vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)
We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.
American Dialect Society members vote “google” the “most useful” Word of the Year for 2002.
Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).
Another year. Another Year-End Zeitgeist is released, showing what millions searched for in 2002. The top ten fastest-rising queries for the year (linked to the Google News Archive) hint at what is at the top of our minds:
One of our earliest 20% time projects gets its own tab and a shout-out on the homepage.
We open our first Australian office in Sydney.
Extra! Extra! Google News launches with 4000 news sources.
Engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on something that is not their main project. Google News started as a 20% time project (so did Gmail).
We hold a party dubbed the Google Dance at our Mountain View office in conjunction with an annual search engine marketing conference.
Early on, webmasters were sensitive to a phenomenon they called the “Google Dance”, when we would update our search index and they would see their results rise or fall accordingly. (The “dance” used to occur monthly; in recent years it has become much more frequent.)
We release Labs for users to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.
We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.
For April Fool’s Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.
Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.
We release our first annual Google Zeitgeist, a visual look at what millions of people searched for over the year just ending. And we also show the top ten fastest-rising queries for 2001 (linked to the Google News Archive results for each query), indicating their special “top of mind” quality.
The word “zeitgeist” seems well-suited to convey the magic of search results when viewed in the aggregate. The more people are searching online, the more patterns there are to learn from about what’s on our minds. “Zeitgeist” is meant to reflect “the outlook or general feeling characteristic of a time or cultural period,” as one definition puts it.
Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.
A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.
An abbreviation for “internationalization.” Instead of writing out the 20-letter word, our efficient engineers use i18n to signify products that will launch in multiple countries and languages (18 letters fall between the first and last letters “i” and “n”). (See also: l10n, an abbreviation for localization.)
Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.
We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.
Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.
Google.com is available in 26 languages.
The Google logo is now centered on the page; we also offer a catchy slogan each day, outlined in red.
The Google logo is now centered on the page; we also offer a catchy slogan each day, outlined in red.
Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
Al Gore visits campus, and Googler Tan Chade-Meng has his picture taken with the former Vice President. Thus begins Meng’s Presidential Gallery, a collection of photos Meng has taken with many of our VIP guests.
The acronym “FIGS” is our internal shorthand for French-Italian-German-Spanish; “CJK” stands for Chinese-Japanese-Korean. For several years, product plans would include these letters to signify that we were developing for this group of languages. (For most launches today, we design for many more languages than these seven.)
Our first public acquisition: Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.
We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.
Google Toolbar is released – a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.
Ten search queries that “spiked” dramatically when compared to the previous year offer a glimpse at what was on our collective minds in 2000 (and are linked to the search results for that year’s Google News Archive): napster britney spears olympics gnutella vote economy big brother cnn survivor tour de france
Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.
We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean – bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.
The search index includes more than 1 billion items.
The search index includes more than 1 billion items.
Google becomes the world’s largest search engine; we announce the first billion-URL index.
We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).
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