Google Turns 27: The Story Behind Its Name and How a Spelling Mistake Created a Global Giant
Google turns 27 today, September 27, 2025. Discover the story behind its name, how a spelling mistake led to ‘Google,’ and the journey from a garage startup to the world’s biggest search engine.
Google celebrates its 27th birthday in 2025 — the search engine’s name was born from a spelling mistake of the word ‘Googol.’
Happy Birthday, Google! Today, September 27, 2025, marks the occasion of the search engine's 27th anniversary-the most popular one in the world. It began as a small project in a garage in Menlo Park and has now grown into a tech giant with billions of searches occurring every day. But have you ever thought about it-what does the word 'Google' stand for?
Meaning of 'Google'
The origin of the word "Google" is, indeed, a polymer of "Googol," which, in other words, is the name given to a 1 followed by 100 zeroes (10¹⁰⁰). It was coined by Milton Sirotta, the then 9-year-old nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner.
Hence, by naming it Google, the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, insinuated the grand aspiration of organizing and making accessible an infinite amount of information.
From BackRub to Google
Formerly, it was not named Google interestingly enough. When Page and Brin were building their search engine, the two Stanford PhD students named it BackRub.
According to Larry Page himself, it was in 1997, while brainstorming a better fit for their company's title, that they considered 'Googolplex,' later shortened to 'Googol.' However, since the domain name 'Googol' was already taken, Sean Anderson, a Stanford alumnus, wanted to check the availability of the name, but he missed the spelling and thus searched for 'Google.' This was to be the name, and shortly after, the domain google.com was registered.
Thus, a simple typo was the making of the company's name, gone on to become one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
Google's Journey So Far
Founded in: 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Incorporated On: September 4, 1998
Birthday Celebration: September 27 every year, marking key internal milestones
Parent Company: Alphabet Inc. (since 2015)
Current CEO: Sundar Pichai
From a university project to becoming one of the biggest technology companies in the world, Google is everywhere-from AI to cloud to hardware and more. Although Page and Brin have stepped back from day-to-day company operations, they are very influential insiders with super voting control at Alphabet.
Fun Fact
Had there been an error in spelling, we would all be saying "Just Googol it!" today instead of "Google it."
