You’ll never guess what Google was originally called… and you’ll see why they changed the name
The original title just didn't scream 'world's most successful company'
SOMETIMES a change of name is a great thing.
Just ask Reginald Kenneth Dwight if he's pleased he opted for Elton John instead.
Or ask Maurice Joseph Micklewhite if he feels his alias Michael Caine is more fitting.
That fact is that initial names can be poorly chosen - in all the excitement, bad decisions can be made.
Take Google for example, when you think about it - it's a silly word but it's one that we've now become very familiar with.
No longer just a company name, it's even become a verb with people "Googling" things left, right and centre.
But the company wasn't always titled with the catchy word, it was initially christened BackRub.
Back at it's humble roots BackRub was designed to be a one-stop-shop search engine for the emerging beast that was the world wide web.
It was in 1998 that the company sat down and decided a re-branding was in order and we don't blame them.
Do you think "BackRubbing" things would have taken off in the same way? Possibly not...
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The story goes that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose the name because of the way the site scans the "back links" to understand how important a page was.
The pair decided to rename a few years later opting for Google after they were allegedly searching for "Googol" but mistyped the word.
Googol actually means 10100 or 1 with one hundred zeros on the end.
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