Type 'Google in 1998' Into Google for a Blast to the Past
Google is celebrating its 15th birthday Friday. To mark the occasion, the company has a special, interactive Doodle on the homepage, letting you break a star-shaped birthday pinata.
However, Google has added another birthday surprise to its search engine. Type "Google in 1998" into Google Search and you'll see how the site looked 15 years ago.
It's not only the visuals that change. You'll see the actual search results for the term "Google" as they were in 1998. Back then, that word only yielded 234,000 results; today, Googling Google will return 9,450,000,000 results.
Unfortunately, you can only see the first page of results from 1998, and you cannot get the results for any other phrase except "Google."
Google celebrates its birthday in one way or another every year. However, this year the company actually made a significant change to its search algorithm. The new algorithm, called "Hummingbird," affects 90% of searches and is meant to keep up with longer and more advanced search queries.