Google's birthday: Why the September 27 celebration doesn't match its official September 4 incorporation date

"Google's birthday" is going viral! As the tech giant marks its 28th birthday today, September 27, billions of browser users were greeted by a celebratory Google Doodle.

This year, rather than a festive artwork often accompanied by interactive digital confetti or nostalgia-themed easter eggs, the company opted for a nostalgic throwback with an artwork featuring the very first, pre-launch beta version of the Google logo.

But what has piqued the curiosity of tech enthusiasts and history buffs is a small discrepancy: Google was not actually founded on September 27. In fact, the company was officially incorporated weeks earlier, on 4 September 1998.

So, why does the world’s most powerful search engine celebrate its birth on a different day?

Google's 28th Birthday Doodle

Google loves to lean into nostalgia on this day. For its 27th birthday in 2025, Google transported users back to the '90s by temporarily replacing its modern interface with its original, clunky 1998 logo.

For its 28th birthday, Google Doodle chose the chunky, 3D logo created in 1997, shortly after Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to rename their search engine from "BackRub" to "Google."

Because they did not have a graphic designer on the team, the founders created this early digital version themselves using GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), a free, open-source image editing software.

The colour arrangement of this early artwork is also completely different from the iconic Google colour scheme we know today.

In this 1997 version, the initial "G" is red, followed by another red/brown "o", a blue "o", a green "g", a blocky yellow "l", and a red "e". It wasn't until 1998 that the company settled on the now-famous sequence of blue, red, yellow, blue, green, and red.

However, this logo was never widely publicised and was used primarily between September 1997 and September 1998, while the search engine was still in its beta phase and running on Stanford University servers.

Legal birthday of Google

In 1995, PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin first crossed paths at Stanford University. The tech geniuses

Before their “dorm room startup” revolutionised the search engine that ranked web pages based on backlinks, they famously disagreed on almost everything during their initial meeting

Originally named "BackRub," the project was later rebranded to "Google"—a playful misspelling of "googol," the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros.

In August 1998, Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote the duo a $100,000 check. This crucial seed investment allowed them to move operations out of their dorm rooms and officially incorporate Google Inc. on 4 September 1998.

From a legal and historical standpoint, 4 September is the company’s true anniversary.

Why was Google's birthday shifted to September 27?

During its early years, Google was delightfully inconsistent about when it blew out its birthday candles. Depending on the year, the celebratory birthday Doodle appeared on varying dates, including September 7, September 8, and September 26.

The permanent shift to September 27 occurred in the mid-2000s. The change is closely tied to a major internal milestone in 2005 when Google was locked in an "index size war" with a then-formidable rival, Yahoo.

To assert its dominance, Google announced it had indexed a record-breaking number of web pages, vastly expanding its searchable universe and dwarfing the competition. This massive announcement was aligned with a birthday celebration on September 27.

The date has stuck since. From 2006 onward, Google officially cemented September 27 as its celebrated birthday.

Today, the date serves less as a strict legal anniversary and more as a symbolic celebration of the search engine's monumental scale, rapid growth, and global impact.

A fitting birthday

While September 4 marks the day the foundational paperwork was signed, September 27 represents the day Google showcased its unparalleled ability to index the world's information.

That record-breaking milestone forever changed the internet, making September 27 a fitting day for billions of users to wish the search giant a Happy Birthday.

About the Author

Arshdeep Kaur is a Senior Content Producer at Mint, where she reports and edits across national and international politics, business and culture‑adjacent trending stories for digital audience. With five years in the newsroom, she strives to balance the speed and rigor of fast‑moving news cycles and longer, context‑rich explainers. <br><br> Before joining LiveMint, Arshdeep served as a Senior Sub‑Editor at Business Standard and earlier as a Sub‑Editor at Asian News International (ANI). Her experience spans live news flows, enterprise features, and multi‑platform packaging. <br><br> At Mint, she regularly writes explainers, quick takes, and visuals‑led stories that are optimized for search and social, while maintaining the publication’s standards for accuracy and clarity. She collaborates closely with editors and the audience team to frame angles that resonate with readers in India and abroad, and to translate complex developments into accessible, high‑impact journalism. <br><br> Arshdeep's academic training underpins her interest towards policy and markets. She earned an MA in Economics from Panjab University and holds a Post‑Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from the India Today Media Institute (ITMI). This blend of economics and broadcast storytelling informs her coverage of public policy, elections, macro themes, and the consumer‑internet zeitgeist. <br><br> Arshdeep is based in New Delhi, where she tracks breaking developments and longer‑horizon storylines that shape public discourse.

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