Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. The search engine was initially developed as a research project to improve the way information was organized and retrieved on the internet. The name 'Google' is a play on the word 'googol,' which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, symbolizing the vast amount of information the search engine could handle. Over the years, Google has evolved from a simple search engine into a multifaceted technology company, expanding its services to include email (Gmail), cloud storage (Google Drive), and mobile operating systems (Android), among others. Its mission has always been to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.