The word ‘Google’ was derived from the mathematical number Googol; officially Google has no full form - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 14, 2022
A post stating ‘GOOGLE’ as an acronym for ‘Global Organization of Oriented Group of Languages on Earth’ is being widely shared on social media. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Claim: ‘GOOGLE’ is an acronym for the ‘Global Organization of Oriented Group of Languages on Earth’.
Fact: The word ‘Google’ was derived from a misspelling of Google Co-Founder Larry Page’s originally planned name, googol. Googol is a mathematical term for the numeral one followed by 100 zeroes. Officially Google does not have an acronym. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether the term ‘Google’ is an acronym of any full form, we could not find any on the ‘About’ section of the Google website. Also, no such full form of Google was mentioned on the Alphabet website.
Google, in full Google LLC, is a US-based internet search engine company founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Describing the origin of the name Google, the Britannica website stated that the name Google was derived from a misspelling of Google Co-Founder Larry Page’s original planned name, googol. Googol is a mathematical term for the numeral one followed by 100 zeroes.
The History of Google described on the Google Arts & Culture website stated, “The Google company was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most widely used web-based search engine. Page and Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithm- at first known as “BackRub” – in 1996”.
According to David Koller from Stanford University, in 1997, Larry Page and his officemates Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira discussed several possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology. Describing the origin of the name ‘Google’, David Koller stated, “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)”. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be confirmed that Google officially does not have an acronym.
To sum it up, the word ‘Google’ was derived from the mathematical number Googol; officially Google has no full form.