Google describes the history and evolution of search

Google has always kept their search algorithms close to the vest, but in recent weeks they’ve opened up a bit more than usually and given glimpses of what they do and how they do it. In August, they revealed a bit under the hood of Google search. Now they put together a 6-minute video that details what has happened since starting as a research project at Stanford in 1996.

Major developments such as Adwords and Universal search made the company both more profitable and more useful to the users. Here is the evolution of search as described by the source.

Here is their search evolution timeline. Click to enlarge.