Googol

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were trying to think up a good name for their new search engine - 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).