Google goes old school to celebrate 15th birthday

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Google is letting users time travel and see what the search engine website looked like when it launched.

When users go to Google.com and search for “Google in 1998” the website transforms from its modern 2013 design to replicate what it looked like back in the late ‘90s.

Complete with an exclamation mark at the end of “Google,” the retro website shows just how far web design has come since its early days. The 1998 version of Google is a plain white page with Google’s original bulky-letter logo and no ads.

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Users will also notice the old-fashioned website lacks any other types of searches, such as “Images,” “Videos,” or “News.” That’s a reminder of how Google has expanded since starting in 1998. The search company now also owns YouTube, makes smartphones and tablets, and works on smartglasses, self-driving cars and balloons that send Wi-Fi signals -- among other things.

Google was launched in September of 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two were doctoral students at Stanford at the time. These days Page is Google’s chief executive and Brin has been focusing his time on the Google Glass smartglasses.

So head over to Google.com and reminisce.

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