Why is the world’s most utilized search engine called Google?
All of you know Google, the web search engine utilized definitely by the majority of internet users. The site elaborates each year more than one thousand billion queries, involving a business of over 30 billions dollars, and representing only itself the 6% of the whole internet traffic.
But why this word Google? What does it mean in English? Nothing!
Contrary to what could be expected this two sillabes have not been created by the two search engine inventors Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two maths and computer science geniuses who met in 1995 at the University of Michigan; the 24-year-old Larry and the 23-year-old Sergey. They started working at their project in 1996 and installed the society in September 1998 in a garage on Santa Margarita Ave., Menlo Park, Calif . It had come the time to choose a name for the firm. During a brain storming, held to discuss the problem, the name of Edward Kasner popped out. He was a mathematician who studied very very big numbers. In 1938 he was trying to find a proper name for a huge number, 1 followed by 100 zeros; something enormous, much bigger than the total amount of particles in the universe, which is estimated to be around 1 followed by 80 zeros. How could he call such a big number? As he hadn’t the faintest idea of the word to choose Kasner decided to ask his little 8-year-old nephew Milton who suggested the childish word “gogol” (“googol” in English).
60 years later one of the students attending the brain storming held by Page and Brin, had just ended up the reading of an old book by Edward Kasner, titled “Mathematics and imagination”, and suggested to choose the name “googol”. The word could not be used as it was, due to royalties, and the spelling was slightly changed. From “googol” to Google! That’s it! Cool isn’t it?
