Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998 after meeting at Stanford University and building a search engine called BackRub. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. The company culture emphasizes hiring smart, determined people and maintaining an open startup culture where everyone contributes ideas. Google's principles include focusing on users, doing one thing extremely well like search, valuing speed, relying on web democracy, and facilitating information access globally without needing a suit.