Google began in 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It has since grown to be the world's largest search engine with its headquarters in California. Google processes over 40,000 search queries per second and earns most of its $74.5 billion annual revenue from advertising. In the future, Google is working on projects like self-driving cars, robotics, smart contact lenses, and internet-enabled balloons.