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Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are known for their love of wordplay, so it should be no surprise that their company name derives from an arcane mathematics term: googol = 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
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Origin
Google is one of the world’s most impactful companies, influencing our lives so much that its name has even made it into our dictionary as a verb! But where did this excellent company get its name from?
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were graduate students at Stanford when they launched BackRub, their groundbreaking search engine program using computer algorithms to evaluate websites’ significance by looking at backlinks. It became so successful that it quickly outshone all available bandwidth at Stanford.
To solve their issue, they sought the advice of their fellow computer science students at Stanford. Sean Anderson suggested Googol – a misspelling of googol (which can be defined as 100 zeroes). Page and Brin liked and agreed with this suggestion, founding Google at its current Mountain View, California HQ later that same year.
Meaning
Google is one of the world’s best-known tech companies, handling over 70% of search requests online and having such an immense effect that “to google something” has become part of everyday language.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin drew inspiration for naming their company from an abstract mathematical term, a googol. It represented 10 to the 100th power and was first mentioned by Milton Sirotta (nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner) in 1920.
Google was founded on wordplay, so their name reflects their love of puns: googol is an abbreviation for “huge number,” while 100 zeroes equal 1, followed by 100 ones in this definition. As American multinational company offering internet-related services and products – online advertising technology, cloud computing, and search engines among them – Google Inc is an American multinational company with roots in California that currently employs around 64,000 employees globally.
Significance
Google was named for a misspelling of googol, an acronym meaning ten raised to 100. Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner is believed to have come up with the idea for its name when he was nine years old and came up with such a term to describe its enormous number.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s decision to name their company “Google” after misspellings of large numbers must have been inspired by humor; their intent was likely to find something amusing yet suggestive of all the information stored on Google search engines.
Two friends appreciated how similar “Google” and Lego are; it hasn’t changed since its inception, indicating its commitment to stability and consistency. Without question, Google search is now an integral part of everyday life!
Acronyms
No matter who you are – an engineer or casual Google user alike – acronyms are an integral part of life. Not everyone understands their origin; some are simple words pronounced the same way, like Miss, SOS (SOS), and IQ; while others have more complex origins, like GCSE exams, DDT, and Yoshka (Google’s first company dog).
Sergey Brin and Larry Page began work on what would become Google in 1998; it was initially known as BackRub but quickly changed to reflect its unconventional business approach based on mathematical terms like Googol (one followed by 100 zeroes). These names reflected Google’s search for knowledge and its unconventional business strategy.
