---
title: "Which came first, Google or the iPhone?"
description: "Google vs the iPhone: Google came first, by 9 years — 1998 against 2007. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/google-vs-iphone/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Google or the iPhone?

**Which came first, Google or the iPhone?: Google**

1998 — 9 years before the iPhone

Google came first, by 9 years. Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park.

## Side by side

|  | Google | the iPhone |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1998 | 2007 |
| Date | 1998-09-04 | 2007-06-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park. | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. |

## 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.

## the iPhone

Announced on 9 January 2007 and on sale from 29 June, the first iPhone had no app store, no copy and paste, no 3G and no video recording. The App Store arrived over a year later in July 2008. Android Inc. had been founded in 2003, four years before the iPhone, but the first Android phone shipped fifteen months after it.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Google or the iPhone?

Google, by 9 years — 1998 against 2007.

### When did Google start?

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

### When did the iPhone start?

2007. The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement.

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## Sources

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