Google was founded on 11 August 2025 at Menlo Park in California, meaning that today the company turns 25. There has been plenty to celebrate along the way and no shortage of wins for Google. The company has grown to be hugely significant in many people’s lives, being used daily for a number of core products.
To celebrate, here’s a rundown of the Google products that should be or will be in your life - as well as a nod to those that didn’t quite make it.
9Google Search
Let’s start with something easy. Google Search is huge and all encompassing and it was also where it all started. Google Search quickly demonstrated its prowess over other search engines, able to deliver the results that people were looking for. It’s such a huge part of daily online life that Google made it into the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English dictionaries in 2006, with Google candidlywriting a blog post about it. And yes, I had to google that.
8Google Assistant
While search gathers and serves information,Google Assistanttakes us from the page and in a new direction. Google Assistant shot to fame because of voice control, launching in 2016. It’s available across Android phones and watches and other Google products. But Assistant plays a much more important role, hooking into Google’s machine learning mastery. Google Assistant has evolved to be increasingly significant and in my opinion is the best of the voice assistants (alongside Alexa, Siri and Bixby). It’s access to data and the quality of interpretation that makes Google Assistant so good.
The browser wars are still underway, but the first thing I do on any product I review is attempt to getChromethere as my default browser. The initial appeal of Chrome was that it was so much lighter and faster than other browsers when it launched in 2008. Linking into your Google account as a gateway to other services is now just a bonus, while Chrome has offshoots in Chromium (the core software that powers Microsoft Edge) and Chrome OS, which drivesChromebooks.
6Google Maps
One of the big wins for Google has beenGoogle Maps. Launched in 2005, Google Earth appeared soon after to wow everyone, but it wasn’t until 2007 that Google Street View landed and everyone stopped in their tracks, literally, to see if their own house was there. Android users have relished Maps and navigation (is it still in beta?) and even iPhone users have adopted Google Maps. We’re also seeing more car manufacturers use it as the default mapping solution - it’s just about everywhere. And if you’re in any doubt,go take a look at the first Google office from 1998 in Street View- pretty cool, huh?
5The Pixel camera
Ok, ok. I’m not going to start projecting like a rabid Android fanboy, but thePixel camerahas completely changed the game in smartphone photography. While many rivals were pushing controls and settings you’d find on a DSLR camera, Google went right back to basics and started talking about computational photography way before AI was even cool.Night Sightdefined what happened next, as Google demonstrated that you didn’t need to restrict features to particular hardware, that AI camera updates could just make photos better for everyone.
4Google Docs
Ok, this one is boring, but while the biggest player in word processing wants you to have a subscription (Microsoft Office I’m looking at you), Google just needs you to have a free account. Students, charities, friendship groups, people in lockdown - everyone has been able to take advantage of the collaborative options presented byGoogle Docs, Sheets and Slides. Sure, it’s still not as fully functioning as the Microsoft alternative, but it’s so accessible it’s a real benefit.
3Google Lens
Did this one catch you by surprise? Point your camera at something, it gets identified, translated, assimilated.Google Lensis hugely powerful and if you’re not using it you really should, because it is basically a visual portal to Google’s intelligence. It can identify plants, copy text from documents, give you a price comparison for something you find. The power that drives Google Lens is likely to have a big as more AI detection of things becomes a greater part in our lives.
There was once a time that if you wanted to run a piece of hardware, you’d have to settle down and design a software platform for it to run on, you’d have to maintain that, and then you’d have to get it to do all the things you wanted it to do. Android came in with universal scalability: it’s not just about phones or tablets, it’s running in cars, on entertainment devices, TVs, domestic appliances, displays in public places. Android was born in 2003, acquired by Google in 2005 and the first phone was announced in 2008, theT-Mobile G1, or HTC Dream.
1And a nod to fallen friends…
While Google has had many wins, the graveyard of Google services is extensive and double deep. Google has struggled for a long time to get to grips with messaging - Talk, Voice, Wave, Hangouts, Allo, Duo - so many options fall by the wayside and that’s before you get to some of the big failures.Google Stadiais still too raw for many to get over and I still yearn for Google Reader. Still, happy birthday Google!
