• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

People Are Just Now Learning What “Google” Actually Means

June 11, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Google has achieved what few brands have, making their company name become the default verb for what their product does. Rather than saying “search it” it’s common to say “Google it” even if the person you are talking to is the type who will Google it on Bing.

Advertisement

Google didn’t start out as Google. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first began the project, hosting it on Stanford servers in 1996, the search engine was known as “Backrub“. This was because the search engine was focused on “backlinks” on the web, or how websites link to each other, telling them where information came from, what sites are trusted and on what topics, and attempting to rank them accordingly in search results. A year later, they thankfully realized the name needed a change, and so nearly 30 years on we do not have to ask people to Backrub topics they are woefully ignorant on. The name they settled on was Google.

Advertisement

But what does “Google” mean? If you Google it on Google, the first result you are likely to come across (though search results are not the same for everybody) explains that it stands for “Global Organization of Oriented Group Language of Earth”. This is, however, incorrect according to Google’s own website, and people present at the name-changing sessions.

“Sean [Anderson] and Larry [Page] were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name – something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data,” Stanford computer scientist David Koller explains. “Sean verbally suggested the word ‘googolplex,’ and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” (both words refer to specific large numbers).”

Anderson Backrubbed (see how bad that name is?) the name to see if the domain name was available, and made a historic mistake.

“Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as ‘google.com,’ which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name ‘google.com’ for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration record dates from September 15, 1997).”

Advertisement

Googol means 1 × 10100, or 1 followed by one hundred zeroes, and according to Google the term “reflects [Google’s] mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.”

[H/T: The Mirror]

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-NZ players reach Dubai after ‘specific, credible threat’ derailed Pakistan tour
  2. Soccer-Liverpool’s Alexander-Arnold ruled out of Man City game
  3. What Are Baby Platypuses Called?
  4. Should You Wash Chicken Before Cooking It?

Source Link: People Are Just Now Learning What "Google" Actually Means

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version