How much rent did Google founders pay for this messy Menlo Park garage where it all started?

Google birthday: Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Susan Wojcicki's Menlo Park garage in 1998.

Internet powerhouse Google turns 26 today. Founded on September 4, 1998, by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it revolutionised how we access and communicate information. What started as a small business in a garage has grown into one of the most influential tech companies in the world, impacting almost every aspect of modern life.

Google's first office was in Susan Wojcicki's Menlo Park garage.(https://blog.google/)

From its humble beginnings in the garage of Susan Wojcicki - the former CEO of YouTube who died last month after battling cancer - Google has grown into a giant, controlling more than 90 per cent of the global search engine market. Wojcicki rented her garage to Page and Brin for $1,700 a month and joined Google, now known as Alphabet, as its marketing manager in 1999.

Today, it is hard to imagine a day without "Googling" something, as the company’s name has become synonymous with online searches.

Google's humble beginnings in a California garage

Like many Silicon Valley success stories, Google started in a small garage in Menlo Park, California. Both Page and Brin were fascinated by information retrieval and decided to build a search engine that was better at organising web data than anything else at the time. This new venture quickly gained attention, attracting investors and technology enthusiasts.

Within a year, the company moved to Mountain View, California, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Google's impact on the internet

Over the past 26 years, Google has grown into a tech behemoth, expanding far beyond its original search engine. From email services like Gmail to cloud computing and the Android operating system, the company has transformed how we use the internet. Google’s innovations include advancements in artificial intelligence, advertising, and much more.