Google mispelled or knot
February 1, 2011 7:01 AM Subscribe
The story that "Google" was a typo for "Googol": repeated many times. Is it true or not? Have the Google founders ever commented? This is probably an old hoary question [insert hoary joke here] but I haven't found a reliable source/answer.
Most of the references to this story online seem to be taking David Koller's account of it as the source, although Koller himself says that he only heard the story second-hand.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:10 AM on February 1, 2011
posted by burnmp3s at 7:10 AM on February 1, 2011
This book tells the story on the first page of the intro referencing a Washington Post article from November 4, 1999.
posted by JJ86 at 7:12 AM on February 1, 2011
posted by JJ86 at 7:12 AM on February 1, 2011
A really old version of the company's contact page offers this explanation:
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 7:15 AM on February 1, 2011 [3 favorites]
10^100 (a gigantic number) is a googol, but we liked the spelling "Google" better. We picked the name "Google" because our goal is to make huge quantities of information available to everyone. And it sounds cool and has only six letters.It may not really be more complicated than that.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 7:15 AM on February 1, 2011 [3 favorites]
I've always taken it as word-play on "googol" rather than accidental mis-spelling.
posted by aught at 7:52 AM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by aught at 7:52 AM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
1997: Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google—a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html
posted by mbrubeck at 8:59 AM on February 1, 2011
Response by poster: My conclusion is that the truth is not knowable in this case. The web sites all say they decided on a derivative of googol. That could be post hoc rationalization for the purported spelling error. There's this Sean Anderson person who was supposedly responsible.
posted by cogneuro at 9:24 AM on February 1, 2011
posted by cogneuro at 9:24 AM on February 1, 2011
FWIW, it's a lot easier to trademark a deliberate mis-spelling than to trademark an existing word that is already in use in other ways. If you want to use an existing word as your business name, and you want exclusive use of it, changing the spelling is helpful.
posted by galadriel at 9:49 AM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by galadriel at 9:49 AM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
I assume you are asking about who particularly was responsible for the name rather than your original question? Otherwise the evidence is overwhelming that the name was a deliberate misspelling.
posted by JJ86 at 11:17 AM on February 1, 2011
posted by JJ86 at 11:17 AM on February 1, 2011
"Google" is trademarkable.
"Googol" is not.
The misspelling story is just cute frosting on top of an otherwise dry, corporate decision.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:44 PM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
"Googol" is not.
The misspelling story is just cute frosting on top of an otherwise dry, corporate decision.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:44 PM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
An interesting side to this - and so very characteristic of our times - is that some descendants of the mathematician who came up with the term "googol" sued Google at the time of the IPO, hoping to cash in. As far as I know it went nowhere. The story is here:
NOW THAT Google's IPO is running, the company is on the verge of being sued by the family of a man who invented the word 'Googol' to describe a very big number.
"Professor Edward Kasner came up with the word Googol, apparently at the suggestion of his 9-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta.
He used the term in the 1940s in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination. For the record a googol is 10 raised to the 100th power - or the number 1 followed by a hundred zeros.
In 1955 he died and much later a search engine called Google was born. His relatives claim that Kasner must be spinning in his grave. They believe Google has gained financially at their expense and they want to become IPO insiders to put his soul to rest.
Hacks from the Baltimore Sun interviewed Kasner's great-niece Peri Fleisher who is coincidently a compensation specialist for a Silicon Valley firm. She admitted that she was only four when Kasner died, and could only just remember him.
She said that although Google has bought attention to the name, it has not bought attention to Kasner's work. Google was not using the concepts, but just capitalising on the name, she said. And who is the heir to Kasner's work? Step forward Fleisher's son, who has the rights to the book.
She said she had written to Google but it had never replied. She said that Google is playing off that number and not compensating them even a little bit. Ethically, it could have been more giving. She does not want cash just the opportunity to operate as insiders for the IPO.
Now they are thinking of suing."
posted by VikingSword at 1:29 PM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
NOW THAT Google's IPO is running, the company is on the verge of being sued by the family of a man who invented the word 'Googol' to describe a very big number.
"Professor Edward Kasner came up with the word Googol, apparently at the suggestion of his 9-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta.
He used the term in the 1940s in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination. For the record a googol is 10 raised to the 100th power - or the number 1 followed by a hundred zeros.
In 1955 he died and much later a search engine called Google was born. His relatives claim that Kasner must be spinning in his grave. They believe Google has gained financially at their expense and they want to become IPO insiders to put his soul to rest.
Hacks from the Baltimore Sun interviewed Kasner's great-niece Peri Fleisher who is coincidently a compensation specialist for a Silicon Valley firm. She admitted that she was only four when Kasner died, and could only just remember him.
She said that although Google has bought attention to the name, it has not bought attention to Kasner's work. Google was not using the concepts, but just capitalising on the name, she said. And who is the heir to Kasner's work? Step forward Fleisher's son, who has the rights to the book.
She said she had written to Google but it had never replied. She said that Google is playing off that number and not compensating them even a little bit. Ethically, it could have been more giving. She does not want cash just the opportunity to operate as insiders for the IPO.
Now they are thinking of suing."
posted by VikingSword at 1:29 PM on February 1, 2011 [1 favorite]
Thorzdad: "The misspelling story is just cute frosting on top of an otherwise dry, corporate decision."I wouldn't describe this decision as "corporate" since it was made before Google was even a corporation. It was just two grad students at the time; they hadn't even hired their first employee. They may or may not have gotten legal advice about the name, but it's not like it was chosen by some branding committee.
posted by mbrubeck at 5:12 PM on February 1, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by milestogo at 7:07 AM on February 1, 2011