Google celebrates birthday

Google is officially a "tween."

The mega-huge web company is celebrating it's 12th birthday today, acknowledging that Sept. 27 is the official birthday. The Google logo is decked out for the occasion with a birthday cake painting by American artist Wayne Thiebaud.

Just think of everything Google has given the world in 12 short years: faster web searches, Gmail, Chrome, the list goes on and on and on. The website is a bona-fide phenomenon and "Google it!" is permanent fixture in America's cultural lexicon.

So, just how did Google come about? Here's a little crib sheet to help you during your next cocktail party discussion:

• Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met on the Stanford University campus in 1995.
• As computer science graduate students, Page and Brin worked together on an original search engine, BackRub.
• They registered Google.com in 1997. The name Google is a play on the word googol, a mathematical term for one plus 100 zeroes.
• The first office for Google was set up in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, a Google employee still with the company.
• Their first April Fool's Joke, an annual tradition, was MentalPlex in 2000.
• In 2004, Google reached it's eight millionth page index.
• Google purchased YouTube in 2006.
• They recently announced plans to unveil GoogleTV to their impressive list of products.

At this rate, it's easy to see that Google will be around for another 12 years, if not another 120.

What are your favorite Google products?

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