Google has turned 25! It has become such an ingrained part of our digital lives in all these years that not even a day goes by when we don’t use at least one Google service. The software our phones are powered by, the voice assistant that controls our smart homes, the email service we all can’t live without, and the app that stores our treasured family memories are all Google products. While these various services are now prominent parts of the Google ecosystem, Google Search remains at the heart of the company’s identity — you don’t just look something up on the internet, you google it.

Search has evolved quite a lot over the years and for good reason. It isn’t anymore a dull wall of blue links but has grown to be far more intelligent and contextually aware to serve the exact information you’re looking for without much effort. There is now an FAQ section to helps answer your burning questions, the rich Google Knowledge Graph neatly lays out information about the commonly searched topics, and so much more. Recently, Google gave Search an AI makeover, which now helps it summarize your search results and present to you the details in a more palatable way than before, and it’s only getting better.

The current avatar of Google Search, which has been polished over two decades and a half, is infinitely more helpful than what it used to be back in the day, there are no two ways about it. When Google Search first came out way back in 1998, it looked much simpler and basic, as you’d expect from websites of that era. But the old-world charm of the classic Search page still holds a strong appeal, especially among people who find the modern Search a tad cluttered. What if I told you that you can feel that nostalgia and get the uncluttered look of Google Search from 1998 today?

Millennials and early zoomers will likely remember a no-nonsense Google Search page with the beveled Google logo that still had its exclamation point attached (an early version of the logo even had a beta tag). You can get that very look and feel of the late 90s search engine back with Neocities’ Old Google website. There are more years to choose from, including 2009, 2011, and 2013 — these are the years when major visual changes were made to the Search landing page, including perhaps the most recognized flat Google logo in serif typography (which was replaced by the current sans serif version). But our favorite one remains the classic look from 1998!

The webpage accurately emulates how Google Search used to look back in the day, complete with the drop-down menu to choose the number of results to display per page and the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Do notice how the page highlights that Google has already indexed 25 million pages as a big achievement, while the billions of pages Google crawls today easily dwarf that figure.

The included links on this page may not lead you anywhere, but the search function works as expected. Punching in your query will take you to a simple web results page, just like what it used to look like. And in case you’re wondering, the search results it throws are current, giving you the best of both worlds. If you prefer a clean and minimalist look for your search engine, you will like using this traditional version of Google Search.

You must’ve noticed the Stanford Search link on this emulated page. That’s not an error, as the earliest version of Google Search was interestingly hosted as a subdomain of the official Stanford University website (standford.edu). You can see that for yourself on another service called oldweb.today that mimics the entire browser experience of 1998 (or any other year you pick) and shows archived versions of the websites you look up.

If you load Google from the morning following its debut, the URL bar will read “google.stanford.edu,” with the copyright also attributed to the university. You may have to be a little patient with the OldWeb because it closely copies the web browser behavior of those days, including their loading speeds and it even fails to load the pages after throwing an error. But it’s still fascinating to see where Google Search came from and what it has become today.

Later when Google moved to its own domain, the Search page put up a notice to inform the users about the change. The Web Design Museum has a screenshot of that page, included above. This digital museum has more images of how Google Search looked from the day it launched until today in 2023 — it’s a nostalgic treat for anyone who has been following Google’s incredible journey so far.

Google has come a long way since 1998. It is now much more than a search engine with its remarkable suite of consumer and business services that come together really well as a cohesive ecosystem. As we wish Google a happy 25th birthday, we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Google with so much rapidly evolving tech around us.