<strong><em>1995</em>
</strong>Sergey Brin and Larry Page meet at a gathering of  Stanford University PhD computer science candidates. They later collaborate to develop technology that will become the foundation for the Google search engine.

<em><strong>1998</strong></em>
The two founders start their own company with the encouragement of Yahoo! co-founder and fellow Stanford alumnus David Filo. Putting their studies on hold, Brin and Page raise $1m in funding from family, friends, and supporters to start Google. On September 7, 1998 Google is incorporated and moves to its first office in a friend's Menlo Park, California garage with four employees. Google answers 10,000 search queries per day.

<em><strong>1999
</strong></em>
Google receives $25m in equity funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

AOL/Netscape incorporates Google's search technology into its Netcenter portal. 

<strong><em>1999</em></strong>
Google moves its headquarters to Mountain View, California and  launches its destination site. The company performs 3m searches per day and has 39 employee

<em><strong>2000</strong></em>
Google becomes the largest search engine on the web. By the end of the year, Google answers more than 60m searches per day.

<strong><em>2001</em>
</strong>The searches number rises to 100m per day. Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Novell and a former CTO at Sun Microsystems, joins Google as chairman of the board, and is later appointed chief executive as the co-founders  Page and Brin become joint president.

<strong><em>2002</em>
</strong>Google and AOL announce a search services and syndicated advertising agreement to provide results to AOL's 34m members and visitors to AOL.com.

<strong><em>October 2003
</em></strong>The Financial Times reports in October that the company is considering an unusual auction system for a planned initial public offering.

<strong><em>February 2004
</em></strong>Stakes are raised as Yahoo says  it is dropping Gooogle search engine in favour of  its own search engine

<strong><em>April 1 2004
</em></strong>Google announces plan to take on Yahoo! and Microsoft with its own free email service

<strong><em>April 29 2004
</em></strong>IPO plans announced