Googol

Not to be confused with the company Google or the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.
Googol

Googol is the number 10100, or 10,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000. It is also known as ten-duotrigintillion or ten thousand sexdecillion.[1][2]

A 9-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner, first used the word googol. Sirotta made this word in 1937, for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.[3]He may have been inspired by the comic strip character Barney Google.

The company Google was named after the number "googol." Its creators originally called it BackRub because it used backlinks to tell how important each page was. Someone suggested "googolplex." They shortened it to "googol" and then spelled the word wrong when looking for a domain name that was not yet taken.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Sarikas, Christine. "How Many Zeros in a Googol? A Googolplex?". blog.prepscholar.com. Retrieved 2022-02-24.
  2. ↑ Peter Lynch (June 23, 2020). "It all adds up: the ever-growing goals of googology". Irish Times. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  3. ↑ "Googol". Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  4. ↑ Nathan McAlone (October 5, 2015). "The true story behind Google's hilarious first name: BackRub". Business Insider. Retrieved July 16, 2020.