Google celebrates 'surprises' on 19th birthday

NEW DELHI: Google is celebrating its 19th birthday on Wednesday with a "surprise" spinner Doodle that allows users to explore 19 games it has launched over the years - including a new version of the snake game.

The reason Google is celebrating surprises is because it believes the search engine came into being because of a chance encounter between its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

"They say life is full of surprises, and Google's history is chock-full of them. In fact, we wouldn't be here without them," Google said.

In 1997, Larry Page, had just arrived at Stanford University to pursue his P.h.D in computer science. Of all the students on campus, Google's other co-founder, Sergey Brin, was randomly assigned to show Page around.

"This chance encounter was the happy surprise that started it all," the world's most popular search engine,

From there, the two came together with a common goal in mind -- to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, a mantra that would go on to become Google's mission statement.

The two hunkered down in a garage - Google's first office - and got to work.

Named for the number "googol" (a 1 followed by one hundred zeroes), Google currently serves more than 4.5 billion users in 160 countries.