when was google invented

Google was officially founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage in Menlo Park, California. The company originated from a research project called "BackRub" that they started in 1995 at Stanford University. The name "Google" is a play on the mathematical term "googol," meaning the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, reflecting their mission to organize a vast amount of information. This founding date marks the invention of Google as a company and the launch of what would become the world's most popular search engine.