The search giant is celebrating its 8th birthday.

After yesterday’s outage I hope and wish that next year will bring new triumphs for the company. I am no Google evangelist; but its success and growth is very important for the health of an entire ecosystem. In this ecosystem Web 2.0 enthusiasts, hobby programmers and solopreneurs are creating new applications, products and companies; hoping that one day Google will come and acquire them.

It also feels good to know that small beginnings can create big impact. Google’s journey from Standford University’s Computer Science Department to the lives of almost all computer savvy human beings is indeed a tale of success worth looking at. It started life as Backrub (based on a research paper by Larry Page and Sergey Brin). You can check out one of the earliest archived Gooogle home page and one of the earliest articles that appeared in media.

You never know how fast will time pass by you. It looks like yesterday when I got to know about Google, the search engine. If I remember right, I came to know of it during a discussion with friends about cool search engines.

Do you remember how YOU came across Google?