Origin of the name "Google"

On September 15, 1997 —  17 years ago — Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered “Google.com” as a domain. The registration occurred almost a full year before Larry and Sergey received their first investor’s check to launch Google. In 1996, when Larry and Sergey were beginning to develop their search engine, they called it “BackRub” — because it analyzed the web’s “back links” and because it connoted a less stressful, relaxing way of finding the information searchers were seeking. As the search engine rapidly improved, Larry wanted a more formal name to describe the search service’s colossal task of organizing and prioritizing the world’s massive quantity of growing information.

credits: Google Archive

According to David Koller in the Stanford Computer Science Department —
Larry's office was in room 360 of the Gates CS Building, which he shared with several other graduate students, including Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira. In 1997, Larry and his officemates discussed a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology. Sean [Anderson] recalls the final brainstorming session as occurring one day during September of that year [1997].

Sean and Larry were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name — something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word “googolplex,” and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” (both words refer to specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as “google.com,” which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name “google.com” for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration record dates from September 15, 1997).

Sources:
https://plus.google.com/105381768086103629742/posts/TLKJeD1J15F
http://www.google.com/about/company/history/
https://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/5-different-stories-about-googles-name.html


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