Origin of the name “Google” | Hacker News Reader

Origin of the name “Google”

graphics.stanford.edu

80 pointscrivabene33 comments

Check the html source for this additional tidbit

> The following day, Tamara entered the office she shared with Sean and Larry, and saw "google.com" as the final name remaining on their whiteboard. Recognizing the misspelling, she brought it to their attention. Sean checked the domain name registry for "googol.com" and found that it was already taken. Larry said he preferred the "google.com" spelling anyway, and when he and Sergey later received their first angel investment check for $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, it was made out to "Google Inc."

Weird, I wonder why this was commented out? Was it something the author preferred to leave out and didn't do it properly? Or was it just an editorial mistake?

I can't remember if I knew the word "googol" before I knew this story or not. I think I may have encountered it in World of Mathematics in high school. Or I may be misremembering and making up a pretty story to make myself sound smarter than I am.

Human memory is so weird sometimes.

I'm pretty sure Carl Sagan mentions both googol and googolplex in Cosmos.

Most definitely. That's where I first heard the terms. Sagan also demonstrated the length of the number by rolling out a roll of toilet paper with a googolplex written on it. https://youtu.be/0lFQOmb6mVs

Funny datapoint - 1e100.net (a googol) is used by Google for some of their servers.

I did know "googol" and "googolplex" but only by virtue of picking it up as trivia when I was a kid. Pretty sure it was a kid named Mike in grade school who enjoyed one-upping other kids on nerdy facts who told me it was "the biggest number". Then again, this was the same kid who later on told me that the actual biggest number was "inthidity".

I have no idea why I remember this but it's just a memory that sticks out for some reason. He must've only heard the word "infinity" but not seen it written out because it wasn't like a speech impediment or anything. Later on I remember learning about the word/concept of infinity and realizing that must've been what Mike was talking about.

Anyway, sorry for the grade school flashback. Just one of those things I haven't thought about in ages.

I got it from Steve Martin & googlephonic sound (1979) which he describes as the highest possible number of speakers next to infinity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjjsz14hL48

I was taught what a googol was (with the correct spelling) 10 years ago when I was in year 10 at secondary school by my teacher Mrs Humble. I was sat in between Kaylee and Simon, it was summer. Also it was the correct answer for the final question of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode where Major Ingram cheated to win £1M. I remember watching the documentary about that episode in a caravan in Wales and thinking "I could have won £1M!".

At least in my elementary school, it was one of those pieces of trivia that the kids would latch on to and try to throw into conversations whenever they could. Like the words antidisestablishmentarianism or defenestrate. It'd be interesting to see how regional/generational these popular trivia trends are.

Yep, I have one of those strong, vivid memories of my 7th grade math teacher telling us about it as one of those fun tidbits for the nerds to latch on to. I recognized it and thought it was clever when I came across the search engine a couple years later, but I thought the spelling was right.

I loved the idea of a googol and a googolplex when I was a kid. I may also be remembering incorrectly that a googolplexplex meant a 1 with a googolplex zeros after it. There was also the notion of the word googolplexplexplex... (Appending a googol 'plex's to 'googol')

Tidbit: my iPad tried to autocorrect 'googol' to 'Google'

Did you ever watch Cosmos with Carl Sagan? Because I am fairly sure that in one episode he covered googol (and googolplex).

The word was at least pop-culture-accessible enough to have been a Simpsons gag (the "Springfield Googolplex" movie theaters) years before Google existed.

Back when you could register the domain you wanted because some dickhead didn't squat it to try get 75k out of your idea for a startup.

If it's not a trademarked word, registering a domain name is like investing in real estate.

Or is every property owner who doesn't live on that property a "dickhead" ?

Yes.

Absolutely yes! It's a nightmare in high-density cities like London.

Then why don't they make laws that you have to live on a property to own it?

It would likely be more popular to institute a land-ownership tax that includes leased properties and exempts up to 80 acres, plus 10 additional acres for each additional person if the size of your household exceeds 8, but only for land in the same county/parish as your official domicile, or within a 50 mile radius of it.

In theory, that would allow rents extracted from the local economy by (presumably non-voting) absentee landlords to be recovered.

A straight ban on absentee ownership would simply lead to workaround legal arrangements, such as strawman purchasers who can then turn around and sign a 99-year "peppercorn" lease to the true buyers. You would be playing whack-a-mole with evasion tactics and corporate shell games.

If you just introduce an economic penalty, people would only evade/avoid to the extent that it produces a profitable bottom line. Rich people and foreigners could still buy up all the available local property, but they would at least have to pay to keep it unavailable to the local market.

@ck2 they should. Singapore for example, you cannot own land, and you cannot buy a HDB house, if you're not a citizen. But you can buy a Condo, so those are expensive for foreigners. But locals can afford HDBs.

Thailand, foreigners cannot own land, or houses, or villa's, etc. But you can own an apartment, because you own the apartment, but not the building or land.

If you want to own a villa, you have to be a lease hold where you pay a huge tax to a Thai company who owns the actual property and grants you the right to live in it.

So, houses in Thailand are affordable for Thai people.

Yet you take NZ, Aus, UK, America, where you can sit on a computer, press buy on a website, get your lawyer to send some money, and own a house and property without ever stepping foot in the country.

Western and now we can't afford to own a house in our own country without getting a 1.2m loan that costs us our life and prevents us from enjoying the money we work so hard for.

I don't think it compares. Investing in real estate has the bonus that it allows others to divest themselves of real estate.

Could you give me some real world examples of people commonly divesting themselves of their real estate?

You don't mean renting out a property do you? Because that isn't divesting, that's highly profitable.

For every buyer there is a seller, and the seller is divesting themselves of that real estate. So, every time someone sells a house is a real world example.

I read something recently that claimed that Googol (the mathmatical term) was in fact a corruption of Google in the first place, though the evidence is thin, it's vaguely plausible:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/05/15/comic-bo...

That seems to be wrong, look here for the details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol

The terms googol and googolplex were first published in 1940.

I'm not sure if you read the link or not.

The word "Googol" was coined in the 1920s. There's speculation that the child who came up with it was inspired by a Comic book character called "Barney Google" who was famous at that time.

> how likely is it that Sirotta came up with the world “googol” on his own, and was not influenced by the massively successful comic strip of the same name, which was EVERYwhere (comics, cartoons, toys, you name it)? I say the odds are extremely unlikely, to the point where I think it’s safe enough to say that he DID get the term from the comic strip

To be honest, that's just wild (and a bit arrogant) speculation on the part of the author. I knew about the comic book, so I expected at least an ounce of evidence, not just the author convincing himself...

One of the early pop-culture mentions of googol was Peanuts, 23rd Jan 1963

http://www.peanuts.com/search/?pubdate=&sort_by=bydate&seaso...

What are the incorrect origin stories the author referred to?

Why didn't Sean just google the spelling of "googol?"

Douglas Adams.

“I described myself as the second greatest,” intoned Deep Thought, “and such I am.” Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat. “There must be some mistake,” he said, “are you not a greater computer than the Milliard Gargatubrian at Maximegalon which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?”. “The Milliard Gargantubrain?” said Deep Thought with unconcealed comtempt. “A mere abacus - mention it not.”

“And are you not,” said Fook, leaning anxiously forward, “a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?”

https://books.google.com/books?id=cUSqB1xA8OkC&pg=PT89&dq=go...

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