History of Google History of Google The Google company was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most widely used web-based search engine. Page and Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithmat first known as "BackRub"in 1996. The search engine soon proved successful and the expanding company moved several times, finally settling at Mountain View in 2003. This marked a phase of rapid growth, with the company making its initial public offering in 2004 and quickly becoming one of the world's largest media companies. The company launched Google
Google China if necessary. At the same time, Google started to redirect all search queries from Google.cn to Google.com.hk in Hong Kong, which returned results without censorship. Hong Kong is vested with independent judicial power and not subject to most Chinese laws, including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information and censorship of Internet traffic. David Drummond, senior vice president of Google, stated in the official Google blog that the circumstances surrounding censorship of the Internet in China led Google to move its search to Hong Kong, the absence of censorship making it more effective for networking and sharing information