genius at work, google, larry and sergey, larry page, microsoft, sean anderson, sergey brin...

The $160 billion typo

Stanford student Sean Anderson was the guy who gave Larry Page the name of his search engine and company:

Sean and Larry were in their office, trying to think up a good name — 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." 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.

Where does Sean currently work? Microsoft.

5:01 PM on Thu Oct 25 2007
By Paul Boutin
141,850 views
9 comments

Comments

waynelambright at 05:56 PM on 10/25/07
Reply by Email
*

Sean, I feel your spelling pain.
Owen Thomas at 10:15 AM on 10/26/07
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 509
Brought to you by Acura TSX

Sean Anderson writes us to point out that Google's market capitalization is now more than $200 billion. Of course. But we were discounting all the oddly spelled acquisitions like Jaiku for which Anderson can't take credit.
samfind at 10:18 AM on 10/28/07
Reply by Email
*

A perk of being named Google is that the word googol refers to a certain part of the female anatomy in Farsi. The would have been even more popular in the coveted Iranian search market.
jhelkins at 12:02 PM on 10/28/07
Reply by Email
*

Ten or so years ago a friend told me about Google. Immediately I thought the name was derived from "go ogle", which is what you could do with this powerful new search facility.
billsbill at 12:42 PM on 10/28/07
Reply by Email
*

Please oh please tell us what certain part?
huntermunkey at 01:33 PM on 10/28/07
Reply by Email
*

@Wayne
If that kind of "spelling pain" can name stuff like Google, let me in on it!
ddanger at 05:05 PM on 10/28/07
Reply by Email
*

i have to call bullshit on this. actually they found ivestment in some guy from sun microsystems, he wrote them a cheque on the spot for $100k only he spelt the name wrong, google instead of googol. in fact larry is on film stating this fact. they incorporated pretty sharpish to cash the money.
sstave at 04:19 PM on 10/29/07
Reply by Email
*

"Sean, I feel your spelling pain."

-- Waynela M. Bright
Owen Thomas at 12:11 AM on 01/03/08
Reply by Email
*
Connectedness Index: 509
Brought to you by Acura TSX

@ddanger: That's entirely incorrect. Page and Brin were using the name "Google" for their school project long before Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check to "Google Inc." That forced them to incorporate Google -- not to change the spelling of the name.