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Brand names abound but rarely do people know the story behind the naming. Today, we turn our attention to our favorite search engine Google and the question: Where does the name come from?
Why is Google called Google?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the search engine Google when they were still students, but it didn’t have that name. We explain how they decided on the word in a roundabout way.
Little child as the source of inspiration
The search engine is named after the invention of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, who set himself a goal in 1938: to find a word for the number 1 followed by a hundred zeros.
The story goes that his nephew is helping him find the word at the time. When Edward asks him about it, the creative eight-year-old spontaneously answers googol. The mathematician is thrilled. So that’s how Googol came to be a whole number that equals 10 to the power of 100. But what does this have to do with our Google?
Sixty years later, the founders of Google learned about the story and decided to call their search engine Google. They like the idea because Google stands for infinity, and the search engine is supposed to host an infinite amount of data.
Initially, GooglePlex is under discussion, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin prefer to stick with Googol. The current spelling was a typo when the domain name was created. But we also know how brands like to make up pretty stories that rely on coincidence.
There is also a theory that it is simply a matter of common sense. Google is easier to write, pronounce and remember. In any case, it’s a better choice than “BackRub,” a name that was also on the ballot. In any case, search engines and back massages make little sense.
- source: Warum heißt Google Google? (gentside.de)/Picture: Image by Simon from Pixabay
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