{
    "id": 1076035,
    "title": "teas.co.uk is older than google.com, by 173 days",
    "slug": "teas-co-uk-is-older-than-google",
    "type": "post",
    "url": "https://teas.co.uk/teas-co-uk-is-older-than-google/",
    "modified": "2026-09-26T03:04:09+01:00",
    "excerpt": "teas.co.uk was registered on 26 March 1997. google.com was registered on 15 September 1997. The registry records, what Google was in 1997, and how to check it all yourself.",
    "content_text": "The short version: teas.co.uk was registered on 26 March 1997. google.com was registered on 15 September 1997. Our web address is 173 days older than Google's, and 527 days older than Google the company.\r\nThe two timestamps\r\nBoth dates come from the official registry records, not from memory or marketing:\r\n\r\nteas.co.uk: registered on 26 March 1997 at 21:04:33 UTC.\r\ngoogle.com: registered on 15 September 1997 at 04:00:00 UTC.\r\n\r\nCount the days between them and you get 173. Google the company was incorporated on 4 September 1998, which makes teas.co.uk 527 days older than Google itself.\r\nWhat Google was in March 1997\r\nWhen teas.co.uk went on the register, the search engine that now sends us so many of our visitors did not yet have its name. Larry Page and Sergey Brin's research project at Stanford University was called BackRub, and it ran on the university's own network. They settled on the name Google, a play on googol, the number one followed by a hundred zeros, later that year, and registered google.com in September. The company itself was set up a year after that, in a rented garage in Menlo Park, California.\r\nThe British internet in 1997\r\nteas.co.uk comes from the early years of the .uk address system. Nominet, the not-for-profit company that runs .uk, was set up in 1996, and .co.uk was the address for British businesses. In 1997 a web address was still something most shops did not have and many people had never typed. teas.co.uk went on the register that spring, and the registry date shows it has stayed there ever since. The address turned 29 on 26 March this year.\r\nAn old address, a young shop\r\nWe keep two facts apart. The address dates from 1997; the shop does not. The company that runs it, Shop At www.teas.co.uk Ltd, was incorporated on 18 October 2025, and it took its first order at 13:24 on 18 November 2025. The company turns one next month, and the shop's first trading birthday is on 18 November.\r\nThe company carries the web address in its name on purpose. Every invoice, letter and register entry that prints \"Shop At www.teas.co.uk Ltd\" points straight back to the shop.\r\nThe timeline\r\nDateWhat happened1996Nominet is set up to run .uk addresses; at Stanford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are building the BackRub search project26 March 1997teas.co.uk is registered15 September 1997google.com is registered, 173 days later4 September 1998Google is incorporated as a company18 October 2025Shop At www.teas.co.uk Ltd is incorporated18 November 2025The shop takes its first order, at 13:2426 March 2026The address turns 2918 October 2026The company turns one18 November 2026The shop's first trading birthday\r\nWhat an old name is worth\r\nAn address that has been on the register for 29 years is not a guarantee of anything. What it gives us is a name that has been part of the British internet for almost three decades and says exactly what we sell. You can remember it after hearing it once, spell it without help, and know what you will find before the page loads. We told the longer story of why the name matters to us in June.\r\nWhat we do with it is up to us. The old address is the starting line, not the finish: the shop still has to earn every order and every return visit on its own merits.\r\nCheck it yourself\r\nYou do not have to take our word for any of this. Look up teas.co.uk on the Nominet lookup service and google.com on the ICANN lookup tool, and compare the dates. For teas.co.uk, look for the \"Registered on\" date; for google.com, the \"Created\" date. They say what we say.\r\nWhy we are telling you\r\nPartly because it is a good fact, and we are allowed to enjoy it. Mostly because it is checkable. A shop that tells you something you can verify in thirty seconds is a shop you can trust with the things that are harder to check.\nMore from the newsMore than 690 new products: teas.co.uk passes 1,000Meet the founder: Lee Samuel Tucker joins our Tea people5,000 visitors from Google in 28 days, and our best month yet with five days to goWe are advertising to robots\nLee Samuel TuckerCurator, teas.co.ukTunbridge Wells, Kent",
    "contentSignals": "ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes",
    "links": {
        "apiCatalog": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/api-catalog",
        "llmsTxt": "https://teas.co.uk/llms.txt",
        "mcpCard": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json",
        "primaryAgenticRouteAuthority": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/teas-primary-agentic-route-authority.json"
    }
}