Google has come a long way from its humble beginning as a Stanford University research project in the late 1990's to the global multi-billion dollar online business that it is today. In that time frame the company has entered a number of markets with varying degrees of success, including advertising -- their bread and butter -- email, maps, videos, voice communications, web browsers, and even mobile with their Android OS.

One area were they've been quite popular is in the social networking scene, but the company is pushing hard to carve itself some market share with Google Plus and so far it's their best attempt yet. They really went on the offensive starting 2012 by integrating content from their Plus service into search results and updating their privacy policy 

What we can expect next from the search giant is anyone's guess, but the interactive graphic below gives an interesting glimpse at how it got where it is today, going all the way back to 1995 when Larry met Sergey. Click on the plus sign to the right for each year for some additional Internet tidbits.

Created By Online PhD