Skip to Content
Google Speaks: Secrets of the World's Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page
book

Google Speaks: Secrets of the World's Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page

by Janet Lowe
May 2009
Beginner to intermediate
332 pages
5h 15m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Google Speaks: Secrets of the World's Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page

4.1. A BLESSED BLUNDER

It was Larry and Sergey's idea to name the company googol—the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Milton Sirotta, a nephew of the great mathematician Edward Kasner, coined the word. It was popularized in a book Kasner co-authored, Mathematics and the Imagination. The founders felt that the name googol would reflect Google's ambitious goal of organizing and making available all of the world's information.

Fortunately, someone misspelled googol, and the bungled version, Google, took hold. It was just as well. As it turns out, the term googol wasn't available for a website name, anyway.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

How to Innovate in Marketing (Collection), 2/e

How to Innovate in Marketing (Collection), 2/e

Monique Reece, Michael Tasner, Tony Davila, Marc Epstein, Robert Shelton, Larry Light, Joan Kiddon
What Successful Project Managers Do

What Successful Project Managers Do

W. Scott Cameron, Jeffrey S. Russell, Edward J. Hoffman, Alexander Laufer
The Human Factor in AI-Based Decision-Making

The Human Factor in AI-Based Decision-Making

Philip Meissner, Christoph Keding

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470398548Purchase book