Google is so ubiquitous online that its name has become a verb. But would the Internet鈥檚 most popular search engine have found the same success if it were called 鈥淏ackRub鈥�?
"Hm. I don't know the answer. I'll BackRub it."
According to a of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the pair and a few of their friends were sitting in the computer science building at Stanford University brainstorming potential names for their service. At the time, they had called the search engine 鈥淏ackRub,鈥� because it would analyze the Web鈥檚 鈥渂ack links.鈥� But it was clear they were in need of a better name (with less intimate connotations) and something that conveyed the large amounts of data they were hoping to index.
A friend, Sean Anderson, suggested 鈥淕oogolplex," the term for a number with a googol zeros behind it (a googol is a number with 100 zeros behind it). Mr. Page shortened it to 鈥淕oogol.鈥� Mr. Anderson, who wasn鈥檛 the greatest speller, searched domain name registries for 鈥淕oogle.鈥� It was available, and a few hours later, the domain name 鈥淕oogle.com鈥� was registered.
