Hi there! I'm a software engineer and tech history enthusiast. I've been following Google's journey since the early days, fascinated by their innovative spirit and incredible growth.

Let's dive into the story behind Google's name, which is actually quite interesting! While it's widely known that Google's name is a play on the word "googol," which refers to the number one followed by 100 zeros, representing their mission to organize a vast amount of information, the search engine wasn't always called Google.

Before it became the tech giant we know today, Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, initially called their research project BackRub. They started this project in 1996 at Stanford University, aiming to improve the way people searched for information on the then-fledgling World Wide Web.

BackRub, true to its name, analyzed the web's "backlinks" to understand the relationships between different websites. This approach, significantly different from the directory-based search engines popular at the time, formed the foundation for Google's revolutionary PageRank algorithm. This algorithm, named after Larry Page, assessed the importance of a webpage by the number and quality of links pointing to it.

However, as the project evolved, the name "BackRub" didn't quite capture the essence of their vision. They wanted a name that reflected their ambition to organize the seemingly infinite amount of information available online.

This is where the word "googol" comes in. Legend has it that the name "Google" was actually a misspelling of "googol." The story goes that when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were brainstorming names, a friend mistakenly typed "google" instead of "googol," and the name stuck.

Whether a happy accident or a stroke of genius, the name "Google" proved to be a perfect fit. It was catchy, memorable, and perfectly encapsulated their mission to make vast amounts of information universally accessible and useful.

So, to answer your question directly, Google's name before it was Google was BackRub. But the story doesn't end there. The evolution from BackRub to Google represents a pivotal moment in the company's history, marking a shift not only in name but also in their vision and the impact they would go on to have on the world.
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In 1997, Page and Brin decide to rename BackRub to something else. ��Google�� is born. It's ��a play on the word 'googol,' a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.read more >>