Google, the company that 'knows everything', turns 20

Google started out as a simple search engine in 1998 and has turned into one of the most important and influential companies in the world. On Thursday, the company celebrates its 20th birthday, and although searching for something on the internet has commonly become "googling", the company itself has become a part of the everyday lives in more ways than one. Google was officially founded in September 1997 but September 1998 is generally seen as the date the company really started its now ubiquitous search engine. The search engine was created for about $100,000 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two Stanford PhD students, who wanted to challenge Altavista and Yahoo, the two most popular search engines in the earlier days of the internet. As its popularity grew, the company expanded to new territories.