Don't try to guess, I'll tell you

Sep 5, 2007 20:21 GMT  ·  By

Google is one of the most popular brands on the Internet and this was proved by the numerous surveys conducted by the research companies. Because it is so famous, most of the Internet users are frequently talking about it just like about a person. But have you ever asked yourselves what Google means or at least where the Google term comes from? Well, Dictionary.com, one of the most popular web-based dictionaries defines Google as "a trademark used for an Internet search engine. This trademark often occurs in print as a verb, sometimes in lowercase."

But still no definition of the world. According to the Google guys, the company's name comes from the word 'googol' which is actually a number invented by Milton Sirotta. Probably the Google name is related to the number of the results provided by the search technology which is usually huge.

"The name 'Google' is a play on the word 'googol,' coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. A 'googol' refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. It's a very large number. In fact, there isn't a googol of anything in the universe -- not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects our mission to organize the world's immense (seemingly infinite) amount of information and make it universally accessible and useful," Google tried to explain the origins of the company's name.

Because it is a company name, Google is a noun. Logically. However, slowly but sure, it evolves and tends to become a verb as numerous users refer to the act of searching the Internet as "googling". For example, I heard some friends saying "I'm going to Google it," meaning that they will search the Internet using the Google search engine.