It’s Google’s birthday today, and it’s celebrating with a doodle. Blows out 25…candles with a look back at how the idea to create the biggest search engine was born.

“By fate or chance, PhD students Sergey Brin and Larry Page met in Stanford University’s computer science program in the late 90s. They quickly learned that they shared a similar vision: to make the World Wide Web more accessible. The pair worked tirelessly from their dorm rooms to develop a prototype for a better search engine. As they made significant progress on the project, they moved the operation to Google’s first office — a rented garage. On September 27, 1998, Google Inc was officially born.”

Since 1998 and that first office in a rented garage, a lot has changed: “including our logo as seen in today’s Doodle — but the mission has remained the same: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Billions of people around the world use Google to search, connect, work, play and SO much more!

Thank you for growing with us over the past 25 years. We look forward to seeing where the future takes us, together.”

The 10 Commandments of Google

According to Google’s founders, Page and Brin, they, and by extension their company, are based on 10 positions they strive to uphold:

User loyalty and everything else will follow.
It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
Fast is better than slow.
Online democracy works.
You don’t need to be in your office to get an answer.
You can make money without doing any harm.
There is always more information out there.
The need for information crosses all borders.
You can be serious without a suit.
Perfect alone is not good enough.