Google was founded in 1998 as a search engine called BackRub by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a research project at Stanford University. It was later renamed Google, inspired by the mathematical term 'googol' meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google provides popular services like Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Photos, YouTube, Android, and more. It also focuses on hardware products like Google Pixel smartphones, Google Home speakers, and other devices. Google's services handle over a billion search queries each day and include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Translate, and more.