Google was originally going to be called something entirely different, and well, strange.
Now, people are just discovering what that name was and it’s leaving them a bit uneasy.
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Today, Google is celebrating its 25th birthday.
And while Google itself is a pretty silly name, it’s well and truly cemented itself into the daily vernacular.
How many times do you catch yourself saying ‘let me just Google that’?
Well, the search engine creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, very nearly had you saying something wildly different.
Google was originally going to be called BackRub.
‘I need to quickly BackRub that,’ or ‘let me plug that into BackRub maps’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
Now, after learning its original name, people are reacting as expected.
“Who else is only just finding out it was originally called BackRub?” one said.
“Back what now?” another said.
“I could die without knowing that this was Google’s old name,” said a third.
still not over the fact that they started out as ”backrub”
— judah (@joodalooped) September 27, 2023
can you imagine “hey can u backrub this for me?” https://t.co/7vUzXovQck
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When the creators put BackRub in the rearview, and moved onto Google, they had a good reason for it.
The word Google stems from googol which is a number equivalent to 10 raised to the power of a hundred.
In other words, a really big number.
The creators thought it perfectly represented the indexing of huge amounts of data, which is what they planned to do with Google.
Also, they liked the sound of it.
Today, the company is worth about $1.651 trillion.
It’s come a long way from where it started, which was in a makeshift office in a rented garage by the way.
Yep, just like Apple and Amazon, Google had very humble beginnings.