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The history of the Verilog HDL goes back to the 1980s, when a company called Gateway Design Automation developed a logic simulator, Verilog-XL, and with it a hardware description language.
Cadence Design Systems acquired Gateway in 1989, and with it the rights to the language and the simulator. In 1990, Cadence put the language (but not the simulator) into the public domain, with the intention that it should become a standard, non-proprietary language.
The Verilog HDL is now maintained by a non profit making organisation, Accellera, which was formed from the merger of Open Verilog International (OVI) and VHDL International. OVI had the task of taking the language through the IEEE standardisation procedure.
In December 1995 Verilog HDL became IEEE Std. 1364-1995. A significantly revised version was published in 2001: IEEE Std. 1364-2001. There was a further revision in 2005 but this only added a few minor changes.
Accellera have also developed a new standard, SystemVerilog, which extends Verilog. SystemVerilog became an IEEE standard (1800-2005) in 2005. For more details, see the Systemverilog section of KnowHow.
There is also a draft standard for analog and mixed-signal extensions to Verilog, Verilog-AMS.