Fact #15 - Answer

Yep, the founders of Google have a spelling mistake to thank for finding their brand name that has become one of the biggest companies the world has ever seen.

The founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started the company back in 1997. They originally called it Backrub, because it used a system to analyse the ‘backlinks’ of websites to index them. They knew the name wasn’t the best, and so turned to their love of math for inspiration.

A googol is a massive number. Here it is:

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

It’s 1 follow by 100 zeros. If you were to count all the atoms in the universe, you still wouldn’t come close to this monstrous number.

Larry and Sergey loved the name, and so went to check if the domain name ‘googol.com’ was already taken. But when they typed it in, they spelt the number wrong. They typed in google.com, and Larry liked that name even more.

More random facts about Google:

Google has a ‘Green Initiative’, and one of their commitments is to regularly hire goats to mow the lawns of their headquarters
Since 2010, Google has been buying an average of one company every week
In 1999, Google was almost bought for $1 million, but the company rejected the offer. Google is now worth more than $300 billion.

Want some fun? Check out these Google Searches:

Type ‘do a barrel roll’ into the search bar – your whole screen will do a spin making you feel very dizzy
Type ‘Atari Breakout’ into the search bar and do an image search – you’ll be able to play the classic arcade game as you blast away google images
Go to the ‘Search Settings’ on the home page, then click Language – you’ll be able to change the language to Pirate to make the Google Search button more piratey
Type ‘google gravity’ into the search bar – you’ll see Google fall to pieces in front of your eyes, but still work
Type ‘fun facts’ into the search bar – you’ll be treated to randomly generated facts