Tech History: The 1st Google Server was Built using LEGO!

Back in the late 1990s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still Stanford grad students, working on the project that would become Google. They needed a way to store and manage the growing number of web pages their search engine was indexing, but the hardware options of the time were expensive and not very scalable.

Their solution? LEGO bricks.

They built a custom casing for 10 hard drives (totaling 40GB—huge for the time) using colorful LEGO pieces. The design wasn’t just quirky—it was practical. LEGO allowed them to easily add or remove drives, rearrange the layout, and keep costs low while experimenting.

That “DIY” spirit became symbolic of Google’s early culture: innovative, resourceful, and a little playful.

The original LEGO storage box is now a piece of tech history—it’s on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.