---
title: "Which came first, email or Google?"
description: "email vs Google: email came first, by 27 years — 1971 against 1998. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-google/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, email or Google?

**Which came first, email or Google?: email**

1971 — 27 years before Google

email came first, by 27 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

## Side by side

|  | email | Google |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1971 | 1998 |
| Date | — | 1998-09-04 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park. |

## email

Messages had been left for other users of the same machine since the mid-1960s. What Tomlinson did in 1971 was send one between two different computers on ARPANET, and pick @ to separate the user from the host because it was the only preposition on the keyboard that could not appear in a name. He did not record the first message and later said it was probably "QWERTYUIOP" or similar. Email is eighteen years older than the Web.

## Google

The date used here is the incorporation, 4 September 1998. Two others compete: the research project called BackRub began at Stanford in 1996, and the google.com domain was registered on 15 September 1997. Google itself has celebrated its birthday on four different September dates over the years, which is a fair indication that no single one is correct. It is younger than Amazon, eBay and Netflix.

## Common questions

### Which came first, email or Google?

email, by 27 years — 1971 against 1998.

### When did email start?

1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

### When did Google start?

1998. Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)