Google began in 1995 as a research project between Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. They developed a search engine called BackRub and later renamed it Google in 1997. Google launched its homepage in 1998 and has since expanded to offer many products and services including Gmail, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Android, and YouTube which Google acquired in 2006. Google has grown tremendously from its origins as a research project to become a dominant force in internet search and technology.