Google celebrates 18th birthday

Google is now officially an adult. The internet giant is celebrating its 18th birthday on Tuesday with an animated Doodle shown to web browsers around the world.

The company, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, traditionally marks its birthday on the Google homepage on September 27.

Google has celebrated its birthday with a Doodle every year since its fourth birthday in 2002. However, the first Doodle, for the Burning Man festival in 1998, actually occurred before the company was technically founded.

Last year, the company split under a new corporate umbrella, Alphabet, which hived off more outlandish divisions of the company such as its driverless cars unit and robotics subsidiary Boston Dynamics. The change saw its founders move away from Google’s day-to-day running.

18 years after it was founded at Stanford University, Google is one of the world's most powerful companies. It is second only to Apple in value, with a market capitalisation of $541bn (£417bn).

Page and Brin are ranked 12th and 13th on Forbes' list of the richest people in the world, with net worths of $35.2bn and $34.4bn respectively.

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