Google is 20 years old — here's what it looked like when it first launched

(Getty Images)

• Google will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its search engine launching on Thursday. 
• It's changed a lot in 20 years.
• For a peek at what Google's search results looked like back then, search "Google in 1998."

Google turns 20 years old this month.

Google Search was the first product from the tech giant now known as part of Alphabet, and Google's been celebrating the milestone all week on social media. 

The company's official birthday is September 27, 1998, which is when Google first launched its webpage. 

In the 20 or so years since then, Google has changed a lot — while the primary colours in the logo and the search engine's name has stayed the same, the company has added a ton of new products, including Gmail, the world's most popular webmail product, and Android, which powers most of the world's smartphones. 

Thankfully, the search page has stayed relatively minimal. 

Here is what Google looked like when it first launched: 

If you want the full retro experience, you can see what Google's search results looked like back then by searching "Google in 1998."

Here's what that looks like (Screenshot) :

What's particularly interesting is the links to other search engines at the bottom of the search results. Except for Yahoo and Amazon, most of those websites are defunct these days.