Google began in March 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford working on the Stanford Digital Library Project.The SDLP's goal was to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library and was funded through the National Science Foundation among other federal agencies.

During Page's sresearch project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin. Brin was already a close friend, whom Page had first met in the summer of 1995.Page's web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page's own Stanford home page as its only starting point.To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank by analyzing BackRub's output.

The first funding for Google as a company was secured on August 1998 in the form of a $100,000USD contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.

Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 4, 1998 at in Menlo Park, California.Both Brin and Page had been against using advertising in a search engine and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students but they soon changed their mind.

By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages. The home page was still marked "BETA", but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google's search results were better than those of competitors.The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.

On June 7, 1999, a round of equity funding totalling $25 million was announced; the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.

In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading web log hosting website. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model and improved the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine Google News.

In October 2003, while discussing a possible initial public offering of shares, Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger However, no such deal ever materialized.

After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in 2003.The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex.

In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. The IPO was projected to raise as much as $4 billion.

At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7% of all search requests on the World Wide Web through its website and through its partnerships with other Internet clients. In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own.

On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as $2,718,281,828.

In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the joint underwriters.

On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million.

In 2004, Google formed a non-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org, giving it a starting fund of $1 billion.The express mission of the organization is to help with the issues of climate change.

In January 2005 the number of shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders, which made the float 127.70 million. The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares.

On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly four percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On that same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500.

Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.

On August 18, 2005 Google announced that it would sell more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets.

On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1,000,000-square-foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Google and Microsoft reached a settlement out of court on December 22, 2005, the terms of which are confidential.

Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership.

On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio.

Gonzales v. Google:U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to compel in United States district court in San Jose seeking a court order that would compel search engine company Google.
Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC vs. Google, IncA jury in Texas awarded Bedrock Computer Technologies $5 million in a patent lawsuit against Google.

In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.

Google announced that it would buy the popular online video site YouTube and maintain YouTube as a separate brand, rather than merging it with Google Video. Meanwhile, Google Video signed an agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and the Warner Music Group, for both companies to deliver music videos to the site.The deal was finalized by November 13, 2006.

In November 2012, the UK government announced plans to investigate Google, along with Starbucks and Amazon.com, for tax avoidance.