Happy birthday, Google: this week in tech, 20 years ago

Hello Google, goodbye Backrub
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched the Google search engine (originally called “BackRub) at Stanford in 1996. And their company was incorporated on September 4th in 1998, making it 20 years old this week. We’ve put together a timeline of Google’s impressive and tumultuous life.
But at first, the company didn’t get much attention — after all, it was just one of many search engines and web portals. (The week Google launched, PC Magazine ran a cover story on the internet’s “hottest portals,” featuring everything from Infoseek to AOL.com — but no Google.) Even Stanford Daily waited until January of 1999 to cover the company, which Brin and Page had proclaimed “Stanford’s next big internet startup.” Within a few months, though, people were praising Google’s “remarkably smart” results, and today, most of its competitors are all but forgotten. RIP, AltaVista.
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