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Events Leading to Google's IPO

By The Associated Press

6:47 PM EDT, August 18, 2004

Since modest beginnings more than eight years ago, Google has grown to become the Internet's largest search engine, and a key provider of revenue-generating advertising services. Here is a look at key dates for the company:

1995 -- Google founders Larry Page, 24, and Sergey Brin, 23, meet while touring Stanford University as graduate students.

1996 -- Page and Brin create BackRub, a precursor to Google which analyzed links pointing to particular Web sites.

1998 -- The pair try and fail to interest major Internet portals in their search technology.

Sept. 7, 1998 -- Encouraged by Yahoo founder David Filo, the pair form Google Inc. in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, Calif. Google begins with an initial investment of $1 million and a "beta," or test, site already answering 10,000 search queries each day.

February 1999 -- With eight employees and 500,000 search queries each day, Google outgrows the garage and moves into an office in Palo Alto, Calif.

June 7, 1999 -- Google secures $25 million in venture capital from leading firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

August 1999 -- Quickly outgrowing its Palo Alto offices, Google moves into a new headquarters -- the "Googleplex" -- in Mountain View, Calif.

Sept. 21, 1999 -- Google sheds the "beta" label from its site. With AOL/Netscape among the sites using Google as their Web search service, traffic grows beyond 3 million searches per day.

June 2000 -- Google becomes the largest search engine with more than 1 billion pages in its index.

June 26, 2000 -- Yahoo selects to Google to provide Web searches to its users. Yahoo users soon tap Google for 18 million search queries per day.

October 2000 -- Google AdWords launches, allowing advertisers to easily create keyword-based text ads that display alongside search results.

February 2001 -- Google purchases assets of online firm Deja.com and integrates their Usenet newsgroup searches into the Google site. Google now handles more than 100 million searches per day.

March 2001 -- Seasoned technology executive Eric Schmidt arrives as chairman of the board. Schmidt, later named CEO, is seen as bringing grown-up leadership to the rapidly growing company.

Summer 2001 -- Google Image Search launches with an index of 250 million images.

October 2001 -- Google partners with Universo Online to bring Google searches to Latin American users. Users can now search Google's index in any of 26 languages.

February 2002 -- Google launches the Google Search Appliance, a combination of hardware and software corporate customers can use to search their own private networks.

May 2002 -- AOL selects Google to provide search and advertising services to its users.

September 2002 -- Google News launches in beta as an automated news aggregation and ranking service.

December 2002 -- Froogle, a shopping and merchandise search engine, launches in beta.

May 2003 -- Google announces AdSense, an advertising program that delivers ads to Web pages tailored to the content of the page.

January 2004 -- Yahoo announces it will drop Google and instead use search technology from recent acquisition Overture -- which had previously purchased search pioneer Altavista.

February 2004 -- Google's index grows to more than 6 billion Web pages, images and newsgroup postings.

April 1, 2004 -- Google launches Gmail, a new Web-based e-mail service offering users full searching of their own e-mail boxes and 1 gigabyte of space to store messages.

April 29, 2004 -- Google files IPO plans, hoping to raise $2.7 billion through the sale of stock to investors.

Aug. 18, 2004 -- Revises IPO to offer fewer shares. Securities and Exchange Commission approves IPO paperwork, clearing the way for Google to set a share price and begin trading.