The Google logo is having a birthday today. On September 27, 2026, the company is celebrating 28 years with a special homepage Doodle.
That sounds simple until you look up when Google was founded. The date you’ll find is September 4, 1998. So why are people wishing it a happy birthday more than three weeks later?
Both dates are real. One marks when Google became a registered company. The other is the day it has chosen to celebrate.
Why is Google’s birthday on September 27?
September 27 is the date Google has chosen to celebrate its birthday for many years. In a post about its 20th birthday, Google acknowledged the mismatch itself. It said Google Inc. was incorporated on September 4, 1998, but that it had long celebrated on September 27.
Google didn’t give a definitive reason for picking September 27 in that explanation. Some accounts tie it to a particular milestone, but Google’s explanation doesn’t confirm one. For now, the useful distinction is between the company’s incorporation date and the birthday it celebrates.
That is why Google can turn 28 in 2026 even though September 27 was not the day its incorporation paperwork was filed.
Where did Google’s story actually begin?
It began before either of those September dates. According to Google’s account of its early years, Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995. They later built a search engine called Backrub, which used links between web pages to help work out which pages mattered. The name changed to Google as the project grew.
In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote the pair a $100,000 check. The project moved out of university rooms and into its first office, a garage in Menlo Park, California. Google Inc. was incorporated on September 4 that year.
There was the idea, the working search engine, the investment and the company registration. They did not all happen on the same day. September 27 became the date for the annual celebration.
The Doodle tradition is older than Google Inc.
There is a small detail in this story that’s easy to miss. Google’s first Doodle appeared on August 30, 1998, a few days before the company was incorporated. Larry Page and Sergey Brin altered the homepage logo as a playful way to let users know they were away at the Burning Man festival. Google tells that story in its Doodle history.
Those changing logos have since become a familiar way to mark holidays, anniversaries and people’s achievements. On Google’s birthday, a Doodle also brings the company’s own past back onto its homepage. Today’s design looks back to an earlier version of the Google logo.
So how old is Google today?
Google is celebrating its 28th birthday on September 27, 2026. The count starts with 1998, the year the company was incorporated. September 4 is the incorporation date; September 27 is the date Google uses for its annual birthday celebration.
What started as a search project now sits behind tools many people use without much thought: Search, Maps, Gmail, Android and YouTube. Its more recent research reaches well beyond that original search box. Google’s Project Suncatcher, for example, explores the possibility of putting AI computing hardware in space.
If you remembered September 4 and wondered why Google is celebrating today, you remembered correctly. September 27 is the birthday Google celebrates; September 4 is when it became a company.
