The Garage Where Google Was Born

It all started in a garage that you can still find with minimal effort — especially if you're using Google Maps.

Less than one mile off U.S. Route 101, the highway that links San Francisco to the rest of Silicon Valley, you'll come to a quiet neighborhood a stone's throw from Stanford's beautifully manicured campus. It was in Menlo Park, in a single-story home on Santa Margarita Avenue, that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented the garage from Susan Wojcicki, now a Google senior VP, who was fresh out of business school and afraid of missing her mortgage payments.

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The duo spent the winter of 1998 in the now famous garage, building the tech company that would change search, and consequently the Internet, forever.

That was 15 years ago, and Google has since become a multi-billion dollar corporation that answers all of our questions and may soon even drive our cars. The company now owns the house, which is no longer lived in, but will always serve as a reminder of where Google started.

To celebrate the company's 15th birthday, Mashable put together a slideshow looking back at the company's earliest days and the garage where it all started.

What is your favorite memory of Google from the past 15 years? Tell us in the comments below.

Image: Kurt Wagner/Mashable