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Name stories · Google · 1997

The world's best-known domain started as a typo

Larry Page and Sergey Brin's Stanford search project was called BackRub. In a 1997 brainstorm a fellow student suggested googolplex, Page shortened it to googol, and the domain was checked by typing google.com by mistake. That spelling was free, and Page registered it within hours.

A year later, the founders owned the typo in print:
“We chose our system name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol”
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders, in their 1998 Stanford paper

The right spelling is the one people type, not the one in the dictionary.

Sources (4)

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