Google on the smartphone. Photo: BM Amaro
The whole “what does Google even mean?” debate started brewing online when someone on a Q&A site asked, “Is Google an acronym?”
That question sparked a whole bunch of online theories about what “Google” even means. Turns out, it all goes back to 1998 when Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two computer science whizzes at Stanford, founded the company. According to the New York Post, the name is a fun play on words!
Some folks, though way off base, thought Google was a super fancy abbreviation for something like “Global Organization of Oriented Group Language of Earth.”
But some folks guessed the name might be a play on the word “googol.”
The New York Post explains it’s a number-nerd term, a “googol,” which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros! That huge number reflects what Google was all about – organizing an unbelievably massive amount of information online.
The term “googol” has its origins in 1920, coined by Milton Sirotta, the then-9-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner later popularized the concept in his 1940 book “Mathematics and the Imagination.”
While brainstorming names, a suggestion for “Googol” emerged. This sparked an immediate practicality check by the tech-savvy founders – was the corresponding web domain available.
However, a typo by a friend led to the misspelling “Google.” This twist resonated more with Larry Page, and that’s how the now-iconic name was born.
