Google

Today is September 27, which reminds me that on that day, but in 1998, a tool that is currently almost indispensable to us came into our lives, with the peculiarity that it is widespread throughout the world. And that is not material, tangible. It's called Google.

It was created by two IT students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, assisted by their professor, Héctor García Molina, when they developed an Internet search engine for their doctoral thesis that would improve the most used until then, Altavista. On September 17, 1997 they registered it and a year later they founded the company whose name is based on a mathematical word that designates the amount 10 raised to 100 (googol); in fact, the current site of Santa Clara (California) is called Googleplex, which also refers to another macro-figure, 10 raised to 10 high 100 (googolplex). The corporate colors are due to the Lego with which the computer they used was made.

With the contribution of several investors the company began to grow, gradually incorporating numerous services. Some were unsuccessful and no longer exist but others do and there they are: Google News, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Earth, Adsense and a fundamental one for current communications such as Gmail. Others are not manufactured by themselves but were purchased, like YouTube.

With time came the diversification, entering the sector of operating systems (Chromium and Android, the latter designed for mobile), browsers (Google Chrome), image (Picasa, extended web editor to upload and share photos, as well as Panoramio ) and mobile telephony (Nexus). The latest, presented this year, is Project Glass, to develop augmented reality glasses HMD.

Currently Google is already part of our daily lives, as well as its field of action, Internet, washing machine, television or air travel. And it seems that it will be for many years, despite all the problems that, like any great company worth its salt, must face: the claims of copyright in books, films and press articles or the self-censorship that was applied to be able to continue working in China In 2008, coinciding with his tenth anniversary, he won the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.