Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It began as a research project called BackRub at Stanford University. The company's name is derived from the mathematical term "googol", which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google now employs over 32,000 people worldwide and has become the dominant search engine, handling around 3 billion searches per day. Its main services include Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.