Google celebrates 27th birthday with its 1998 logo

Google turned 27 on September 27, 2025, and the company marked the milestone by taking everyone back to where it all began. The search giant’s homepage featured a special birthday Doodle that revives the very first Google logo from 1998, a deliberately retro nod that paired nostalgia with a reminder of how far the company has come.

The Doodle itself is simple and effective: the original stylized lettering that preceded today’s cleaner wordmark, set on Google’s familiar white homepage. In its description Google invited users to “let this vintage logo transport you back to the ‘90s and teleport into the future,” pointing not just at the company’s history but at its current push into AI and other new areas.

Google’s story is now widely known, but it still reads like a tech origin myth. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started the search project while PhD students at Stanford. The company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, after early work in a Menlo Park garage. Over the next decades the tiny research project grew into Alphabet Inc., and Google expanded well beyond search building Android, YouTube, Maps, cloud services, advertising platforms, consumer devices and a broad portfolio of AI research.

The birthday Doodle highlights that arc: from an “out of office” doodle (one of the very first Google Doodles was a tongue-in-cheek note when Page and Brin went on vacation) to the elaborate interactive artworks and mini-games the Doodle team produces today.

Why September 27

There’s often confusion about Google’s “real” birthday. Legally, the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, but Google has traditionally celebrated on September 27, a date tied to early public milestones and Doodle history. That’s why the company’s homepage marks September 27 as the anniversary each year.

What “Google” actually means

The name itself is a little story in miniature: Google grew out of a brainstorm over the mathematical term “googol” 10^100, or a 1 followed by 100 zeros chosen to reflect the founders’ ambition to index huge amounts of information. When an early team member, Sean Anderson, searched for availability and mistyped it as google, the domain was free.

Birthday deals: Pixel discounts and limited-edition swag

Google didn’t celebrate the 27th birthday with just a Doodle. The Google Store joined the party with a short, sharp promotion: 20% off selected items using the code BIRTHDAY27 (valid through September 28, 2025). That meant discounts on Pixel phones and accessories Pixel 9, Pixel 9a, Pixel 9a Pro Fold, Pixel Buds Pro 2, Pixel Watch 3 and Fitbit Charge 6 among the highlights plus store credit incentives on certain purchases (for example, extra Google Store credit with Pixel 9 and Pixel 9a purchases, per the store’s announcement).

Every purchase during the birthday event included limited-edition stickers, and phone purchases came with a special wristlet. Google also reminded buyers that its devices come with integrated services Gemini for AI tasks, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Photos and Gmail tying the hardware push back to its software ecosystem.

If the 1998 logo Doodle was about looking back, the copy on the Doodle explicitly invites users to teleport into the future  a line that captures Google’s positioning. Under CEO Sundar Pichai, Alphabet has doubled down on AI, rolling out Gemini integrations across Search, Workspace and consumer products, and investing in areas like quantum computing and cloud infrastructure.

The anniversary pieces across the press celebratory Doodles, brand retrospectives and explainer articles about the company name and founding served a common purpose: remind people of Google’s cultural ubiquity while spotlighting the company’s current products and campaigns (including the short birthday sale).

Why this matters to users

For everyday users the anniversary is a gentle reminder of how much of daily digital life is now tied to a few large platforms. For buyers, the limited-time Pixel discounts offered a tangible reason to upgrade. And for observers of tech and culture, the Doodle and the stories about Google’s name and roots are part nostalgia, part branding: a moment that stitches together the past (a garage, a misspelled domain) and the present (global services and AI ambitions).

Quick facts

• Google was incorporated on September 4, 1998; it celebrates its anniversary on September 27.

• The 27th birthday Doodle on Sept 27, 2025, revived Google’s 1998 logo.

• Google Store offered 20% off selected items with code BIRTHDAY27 (promotion ended Sept 28, 2025) and included limited-edition stickers and wristlets for phone purchases.

• The name “Google” is a misspelling of “googol,” a mathematical term for 10^100.

Google’s 27th birthday was equal parts nostalgia and a reminder of how quickly technology moves. The throwback Doodle nodded to humble beginnings in a garage and a lucky typo that became a global brand, while the Pixel discounts and AI rollouts underscored that Google is still very much focused on what comes next. Whether you remember your first Google search or you just grabbed a birthday deal, the anniversary is a small moment to reflect on how much of our daily lives now run through a single company and to wonder what the next decade of search, AI and devices will bring.