Google's Birthday Mismatch: Why It Celebrates a Month Late

Google is celebrating its 28th birthday today with a special Doodle on its homepage. The artwork brings back a nostalgic look at the company's early logo, but the date doesn't match Google's actual incorporation record.

The company was legally formed on September 4, 1998, not September 27, which is the date it has chosen to celebrate its birthday every year. This discrepancy has been going on for nearly three decades, and there's no clear reason why Google chose September 27 as its official birthday.

One theory suggests that the company's first birthday Doodle was created in 2002, and since then, the date has stuck out of habit rather than any historic significance. The search engine giant has acknowledged the confusion in the past, but it seems to have leaned into September 27 as its birthday month.

The incorporation date gets left out because Google's early history is full of important dates that don't line up with September 27. For instance, the google.com domain name was registered on September 15, 1997, a year before the company was incorporated. The founders' work on the search engine itself began earlier, in the mid-1990s while Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still students.