Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University. It has grown to be the largest search engine in the world. Google promotes a casual and flexible work culture with policies like "20% time" where engineers can spend one day per week working on passion projects. While Google has strengths in its powerful search engine and huge data collection, it also faces threats from competitors in areas like online shopping and voice assistants as well as risks regarding user privacy and data use.