Happy birthday Google! Search engine celebrates 15 years

Tell them that the world's favourite internet search engine doesn't work, and that they'll have to find another method of checking a fact, winning a bet, tracking down a birthday present, finding an old colleague – the list could and does go on and on.

Watch the colour gently run from their faces and then tell them that such a world actually did exist, and it was only 15 years ago.

It was the world of BG (before Google). All they have known is the much simpler (to them anyway) of AG.

Because, today the company celebrates its 15th birthday although, much like our own Queen, it actually has two birthdays.

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The company was first registered on September 4, 1998, but later decided that September 27 would become its birthday, or 'Google Doodle Day' as those wacky Californians call it.

It is believed the date was changed as an attempt to gain media coverage several years ago, at a time when Yahoo was gaining ground on Google.

It is quite strange to think that, but for a mis-spelling, millions of us would be hunched over our computers today 'googoling' our way to a happier life.

Stranger still would be if we were typing our search engine words into 'BackRub'.

That was the original name of the site, but was then changed in 1997 to Google – a misspelling of the word googol which is a term for the number one followed by one hundred zeros.

And so it is today that we mark 15 years since graduates (and almost definite Geeks extraordinaire) Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up a small web crawler from a garage in Silicon Valley.

The site is now the world's number one search engine and its name has become so synonymous with searching, it is used as a verb in its own right.

Every day people all over the world ask in many different languages 'have you Googled it, what does Google say, have you tried Googling it'? Asking 'have you Binged it' or 'tried Yahooing that one' doesn't quite have the same impact does it?

Indeed if you type 'Google' into Google you'll get somewhere around 10,000,000,000 matches, although by the time you read this it will be doubtless be marching relentlessly towards 11,000,000,000 – which, whether it's trillions or zillions is clearly a very big number.

It's a bit like the value of the company which is currently hovering around the £160 billion mark. That makes Page and Brin two of the richest 40-year-olds on the planet, with fortunes estimated at around £21 billion each.

It is, it goes without saying, the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger.

Although it had humble beginnings, the company's growth has been staggering. The company now has more than 70 offices in more than 40 global locations, including London, with their headquarters – known as the Googleplex – in Mountain View, California.

Innovations subsequently launched by Google that have become part of everyday life include Google Maps, Google Streetview and Google Earth, each showing how far the company now spans across the globe. Its Android operating system is also the most popular mobile software in the world and it has teamed up with manufacturers including Asus and LG to launch a number of best-selling devices such as the Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 7 tablet.

Google also bought Motorola in 2011 and a new Moto X handset is expected towards the end of this year.

Looking to the future, Google Glass is one of the internet giant's latest products, aiming to offer voice-activated hands-free connectivity through a wearable device.

Plus, Google has designed a range of self-driving cars that use sensors and mapping technology to travel around cities without a driver.

That suggests that Google's march towards world domination continues apace. But for many people that is the problem.

Google seems to know everything about us – it is Big Brother with knobs on. It now serves up tailor-made ads which, strangely, seem to know more about what we want that we actually know ourselves.

It knows what we have searched for and passes that information on to third parties which for many people is a step too far.

But it could be argued that it is the price we have to pay for inviting the great god Google into our world.

It is notoriously tough to stay ahead of the game in the cut-throat and constantly changing internet world, but they seem so intent, and actually quite private about what they do on a day-to-day basis, that it would be no surprise if they were not to keep their place at the top of the market for many years to come.

Which will doubtless be a blessed relief for all those 20-somethings who have no memory of life 'BG'.