Hacker News Reader

Oh, I'm fully familiar with the game it's referring to. I just don't understand the connection between a serious search engine and a silly child's game.

Is it some kind of inside joke? I just don't get it. I have nothing against the child's game; it just makes no sense to anyone that they named it after that, and it's not an easy name to pronounce or type. Bottom line: It sounds, feels, and looks bad on them.

View on HN

Keep in mind, Google was roundly mocked initially as a ridiculous name that sounded like a word a baby/child might say.

Google, Bing, Yahoo!, A9 Search, Excite, AltaVista, Overture, Inktomi, Lycos, HotBot, DogPile, Mamma.com., Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Cuil.

Those are all ridiculous names if you want to scale them by seriousness.

Then you have MSN Search, AOL / NetFind, InfoSeek, GoTo, LookSmart, WebCrawler, alltheweb. Slightly less ridiculous sounding, which ultimately that didn't make any difference.

I still remember when 'googol' was my 2nd grade answer to 'no, I like it thousands better, no millions better, no billions better, no googol better!'

And somehow that silly abstraction for "a big number number than yours" became a mega-behemoth of a corporation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com