Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University. They created Google as a research project to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. Google became the world's largest search engine in 2000 with its introduction of a billion-page index. It has since expanded into many other products and services through acquisitions and innovation, including Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and Android. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.