Google celebrates 28th birthday with nostalgic doodle highlighting its original 1997 beta logo

Google marked its 28th birthday with a special, animated homepage Doodle featuring a nostalgic aesthetic inspired by its vintage early-era logos from 1998.

The Nostalgic Doodle

The homepage artwork celebrates the company's evolution by looking back at its startup roots, contrasting its humble beginnings with its current status as a global tech empire.

Google's history is marked by several milestones. The project began as "BackRub" in 1996, when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford University. 

Its domain, google.com, was registered in September 1997, while the company was officially incorporated on September 4, 1998. That month, Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim provided a landmark $100,000 investment.

Google's Birthday 2026 Doodle - Google Doodles

Learn more about the creation of Google's Birthday 2026 Doodle and discover the story behind the unique artwork.

Why September 27?

Google did not always observe a single anniversary date in its early years. Since 2006, however, it has consistently celebrated on September 27, a date traditionally associated with a record-breaking announcement about the number of web pages indexed by its search engine.

Over nearly three decades, Google has expanded from a simple search engine into a broad digital ecosystem encompassing YouTube, Android, Gmail, Google Maps and advanced AI systems such as Gemini, under its parent company, Alphabet Inc.