September 27th - The day everyone finally wants cake

Google is 10 today as you might have seen from their special birthday logo or read on the Official Google Blog. Why today? Becuase September 27th is the day Google feels like eating cake.

As I wrote ealier this month, Google’s *real* birthday is generally thought to be on September 7 because that’s the day that Google Inc was officially created. However Google themselves say:

Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.

That day is today and Google is 10 (or 13 or 9 depending on your point of view). In celebration, Google have created a special tenth birthday page which provides a way to waste a few minutes of your times by answering questions such as “When was the first vegetable garden planted on the Google campus?”.

Perhaps more usefully, Google has provided a timeline giving a history of the company so far including a link to an interesting article by Danny Sullivan back in 1998 giving an overview of state of search at the time and reviewing the up and coming new player - Google. He writes:

If you pay a visit, don’t be frightened by the interface. One thing Google needs is a good facelift. Relevancy scores and other extraneous information can obscure the actual listings — but I did say this was an experimental service, right?

Google have come far in their “ten” years and have perhaps grown faster than any company ever before them. Yet Google isn’t perfect and has made a few enemies and drawn criticism from some, as I wrote a few weeks ago in my article, ‘Does Google need to grow up?‘.

Certainly the last ten years have been very good ones for Google. Will the next few be quite a good? Google haven’t yet made any big mistakes (in my opinion) and have continued to grow year after year at a phenomenal rate. But as they stick their fingers into more and more pies and the company gets bigger, mistakes are going to become more likely, their enemies will become greater and stronger and growth will become harder.

(Source:Ten years and still counting Read More ... )