This morning on Kidd Kraddick in the Morning, someone made an off-hand mention about making up a name that doesn’t mean anything. However Google DOES mean something. It’s a play on the word “Googol” (pronounced the same way) which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros. This was to reflect Google’s aim to organize the internet into a large database to be searchable.

Below is what a googol looks like:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

To further their use of this play on words, Google’s headquarters is named the “Googleplex” which is a play on the word Googolplex. A Googolplex is a 1 followed by a Googol (Ten Duotrigintillion) of zeros.

Googol is much easier to say than Ten Duotrigintillion.

And now you know.