Bizzare Facts

The world's most dominant information gatekeeper, the company known globally as **Google**, started with a name that sounds more like a questionable massage parlor than a revolutionary technology project. In **1996**, when **Larry Page** and **Sergey Brin** began developing their search engine at Stanford University, they dubbed it **'BackRub.'**

Unlike most early search engines which relied on counting keyword mentions, Page and Brin's engine pioneered the use of **'back links,'** or the number and quality of other pages linking to a specific site, to determine its importance and relevance. The name was a literal, functional reference to this process—the engine was 'rubbing the back' of the web to see who was connected to whom. While scientifically apt, the name lacked commercial punch.

The name was wisely changed to **Google**—a playful misspelling of the mathematical term **'googol,'** which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. This new name was chosen to reflect the founders' mission to organize the seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. Yet, the brief, awkward reign of 'BackRub' remains a charming relic of Google's ridiculously humble, pre-billion-dollar beginnings.