What is Google’s original name? let’s discuss here.
BackRub
Beginnings. Google has its origins in “BackRub“, a research project that was begun in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.
From the garage to the Googleplex
The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around.
By some accounts, they disagreed about nearly everything during that first meeting, but by the following year, they struck a partnership. Working from their dorm rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.
Soon after, Backrub was renamed Google (phew). The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey’s mission “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Over the next few years, Google caught the attention of not only the academic community, but Silicon Valley investors as well. In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $1,00,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and former CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and a bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights. (The tradition of keeping things colourful continues to this day.)
Even in the beginning, things were unconventional: from Google’s initial server (made of Lego) to the first “Doodle” in 1998: a stick figure in the logo announcing to site visitors that the entire staff was playing hooky at the Burning Man Festival. “Do not be evil” captured the spirit of our intentionally unconventional methods. In the years that followed, the company expanded rapidly—hiring engineers, building a sales team, and introducing the first company dog, Yoshka. Google outgrew the garage and eventually moved to its current headquarters (a.k.a.“The Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California. The spirit of doing things differently made the move. So did Yoshka.
The relentless search for better answers continues to be at the core of everything we do. Today, Google makes hundreds of products used by crores of people across the globe, from YouTube and Android to Gmail and, of course, Google Search. Although we’ve ditched the Lego servers and added just a few more company dogs, our passion for building technology for everyone has stayed with us—from the dorm room to the garage, and to this very day.
The true story behind Google’s hilarious first name: BackRub
Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are definitely fans of wordplay, and they seem to have a thing for company names that are both goofy and yet significant at the same time.
“We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!”
But this certainly wasn’t the first time the duo had experimented with language. Back in 1996, before Google even existed as an entity, Page and Brin were already making up nerdy names for search engines.
According to Stanford’s David Koller, and Google’s own website, Page and Brin’s 1996 foray into the world of search engines was initially called “BackRub.”
Yes, BackRub.
They called it this because the program analyzed the web’s “back links” to understand how important a website was, and what other sites it related to. BackRub operated on Stanford’s servers until it eventually took up too much bandwidth.
But by 1997, Page seems to have decided that the BackRub name just wasn’t good enough. According to Koller, Page and his officemates at Stanford began to workshop different names for the search engine technology, names that would evoke just how much data they were indexing.
The name “Google” actually came from a graduate student at Stanford named Sean Anderson, Koller writes. Anderson suggested the word “googolplex” during a brainstorming session, and Page countered with the shorter “googol.” Googol is the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes, while googolplex is 1 followed by a googol zeros.
Anderson checked to see if that domain name was taken, but accidentally searched for “google.com” instead of “googol.com.” Page liked that name even better, and registered the domain name for Brin and himself on September 15, 1997.
From BackRub to Google to Alphabet – makes you wonder what’s next.
Origin of the name “Google”
From time to time I read or hear stories of the origin of the search engine and company name “Google” that are incorrect, which prompts me to write this brief account, based on my understanding of the genesis of the name. The source of my information is my friends and colleagues from Wing 3B of the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University, where Google was born.
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their initial search engine “BackRub,” named for its analysis of the web’s “back links.” Larry’s office was in room 360 of the Gates CS Building, which he shared with several other graduate students, including Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira. In 1997, Larry and his officemates discussed a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology. Sean recalls the final brainstorming session as occurring one day during September of that year.
Sean and Larry 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. Sean verbally suggested the word “googolplex,” and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” (both words refer to specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. 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). https://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html
The Story Behind Google’s Hilarious First Name, Backrub
You probably know that the name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol”, which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros.
But did you know that the tech giant used to be known by a completely different name.
Google was initially named BackRub.
In 1996, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin called it Backrub because the program analysed the web’s “back links” to understand how important a website was, and what other sites it related to.
According to Stanford’s David Koller, Page and his team began to think of different names for the search engine by 1997.
The name “Google” actually came from a graduate student at Stanford named Sean Anderson. He suggested the word “googolplex” and Page shortened it to “googol”.
Googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes, while googolplex is 1 followed by a googol zeros.
When Anderson was checking if the domain “googol.com” was available, he accidentally types “google.com”.
Page liked “Google” and the name was registered on September 15, 1997.
And that’s how Google was born!
While talking about the name of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Page once said, “We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for!”
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