• How did Google get its name?

The search engine we use every day was almost called 'BackRub', until a simple typo changed everything.

In 1996, Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin started a research project with that exact name.

The name 'BackRub' actually made sense at the time, as their program analyzed the web's 'backlinks' to figure out how important a page was.

But by 1997, they knew they needed a more professional name for their growing project. 💻

During a brainstorming session, a fellow student named Sean Anderson suggested 'googol,' a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

When Anderson went to check if the domain name was available, he accidentally typed 'google.com' instead of 'googol.com'.

Page liked the accidental new name and registered it on September 15, 1997. 🤔

The company we know today was officially born from a project named BackRub and a happy accident.