Google

A social network that every Google account was given whether it wanted one or not. Closed with the explanation that 90 per cent of sessions lasted under five seconds.

Google's investment in Anthropic, reported at around $300m in early 2023 and expanded by up to $2bn that October, which put the same lab in the arms of two rival clouds at once. In October 2025 the relationship became a chip deal: Anthropic agreed to use up to one million of Google's TPUs, a commitment reported in the tens of billions and in gigawatts, both of which were new units for a press release.

Google's chat and video-call app, launched at I/O in May 2013 to replace Google Talk, Google+ Messenger and whatever else was lying around, then itself replaced by Allo, Duo, Meet and Chat over a decade in which Google could not decide what a message was. Finally switched off in November 2022. The record notes that at any moment between 2013 and 2022 there were at least three Google messaging apps, and that Hangouts was the one people actually used.

Google's social network, launched in June 2011 with 'Circles', Hangouts and a forced integration with YouTube comments that made the whole internet hate it at once. Claimed hundreds of millions of users, most of whom had been signed up by opening Gmail; shut down for consumers on 2 April 2019 after a data bug exposed a network of empty profiles. The record notes it was the best-designed ghost town of the decade.

Email, chat and documents merged into one live-updating thing nobody could explain. Invited only, then abandoned in fifteen months; every collaborative tool since has quietly rebuilt it.

The internet's habit of counting how many times Google said 'AI' during its I/O keynote, which began in May 2023 when the tally was reported at around 140 and became official in May 2024 when Sundar Pichai showed a counter on stage reading 120 and said it one more time. The record's entry for a company noticing the joke and joining in, which is either good humour or a confession.

The habit of searching one's symptoms and arriving, in three clicks, at a diagnosis and a prognosis — Dr. Google — a joke of the mid-2000s that doctors used with a sigh and patients used with a printout. The record's entry for the physician who is always available and always says cancer.

The Google demo of May 2018 in which the Assistant telephoned a hair salon and a restaurant, booked appointments, and said 'mm-hmm' and 'um' so naturally that the audience gasped and the press asked whether the calls were real. The record notes it was the first AI demo to raise the question of whether a machine should say it is one, and that Google added a disclosure after a week of being asked.