TL;DR
Google is turning 19 this year and we wanted to celebrate our favorite search engine’s birthday by showing off some of Alphabet’s family photos. Like all family photos, there are some pretty embarrassing ones here that probably have not aged well at all.
Google is turning 19 this year and we wanted to celebrate our favorite search engine’s birthday by showing off some of Alphabet’s family photos. Like all family photos, there are some pretty embarrassing ones here that probably have not aged well at all. We climbed aboard the Wayback Machine and took a look at Google.com from its birth to now. Here you go!
The company was founded in 1998, a time when Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” was topping charts. Ah, the 90s:
No, we did not ‘draw’ this up in Microsoft Paint. This is the earliest available screenshot of Google.com on web.archive.org that we could find.
The first real version of Google.com came a bit later, bringing with it a new era of text-based-search that the world’s population soon took from a silly company name into a verb. Seriously, go Google it.
This is how Google looked when everyone else was partying like it was 1999.
Soon, the training wheels came off and it was go-time. The year was 2000. What was left of a population decimated by Y2K were searching for “how to live in the post-apocalyptic technological wasteland brought about by a tiny software glitch” on the search engine that was officially no longer in beta.
Google.com in Y2K, 2000
Just to be clear, Y2K did not decimate the world. *sarcasm sign*
Everything looked pretty much the same for a couple of years until Google hit it’s “awkward teen phase.” way too early. Presenting: The ridiculous font and weird punk-rock resolution here from 2003.
The secret of Google.com’s beauty over the years was that they kept things simple. The landing page has always had an understated elegance in clean simplicity. That said, the above image has a weird symbol next to the colorful “Google” text and there’s pretty much no way to determine what the tiny “TM” means.
It was pretty quiet Google.com-wise, for the next 7 years. Then, in 2010, it drops an “RKO outta nowhere” bombshell of an update — prepare yourself:
This “radical” redesign shattered all pre-conceived notions that “change can’t be subtle” and if that doesn’t blow your mind out of your skull: take a seat and check out this updated Google.com design 2 years later, 2013. BTW, the most asked question of the year was “What is twerking?”
Google.com in 2013
Looks pretty familiar to folks who started using computers in 2010 and maybe stopped in 2016.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Google hasn’t changed much since 2013 so that must be the end of this display. You, my friend, are wrong.
It was in 2015 when Google made the decision to become Alphabet and with it, came a new logo for Google.com:
We know by now that Google doesn’t change often. That brings us to 2017 and this is what Google.com looks like now:
Google.com in 2017
We’re pretty sure 19 years from now, Google.com isn’t going to look much different than it does right now. A few minor tweaks here and there every couple of years seems to be a tried and tested mantra for success.
