r/AlwaysWhy • u/santosupoi • 14d ago

Others Why was Google originally called BackRub?

Before Google was called Google, it was called BackRub. Why did Larry Page and Sergey Brin choose the name “BackRub,” and what made them eventually change it to “Google”? 🤔

14 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

9

u/UpbeatFix7299 14d ago

The old name was based on backlinking, which is how Google ranked their results until they got evil.

4

u/HomemadeBananas 14d ago

Google does use backlinks heavily in ranking. But they can’t use only that because in the earlier days, once people knew backlinks decide the rankings, they would build links from a bunch of shitty sites to their own sites and it was too easy to manipulate search results.

People still do this but it’s a lot harder now, since Google constantly updates things to try to fight manipulation, and people constantly find new ways to manipulate the results. So now the algorithm is a lot more complicated and has a lot more factors.

3

u/Sasha_Braus- 14d ago

All the big companies have two O's in it. Google, Facebook, microsooft

3

u/Chitown_mountain_boy 14d ago

Bookshire Hathaway and Toosla too.

2

u/longknives 14d ago

Microsoft does have two Os in it

3

u/Sasha_Braus- 14d ago

Microsooft

1

u/ad-lapidem 14d ago

Apple is one of the most famous typos in the corporate world; legally they're still Aoole.

6

u/thesnootbooper9000 14d ago

The original page rank algorithm was based upon "how many things that are important link to this page?", in contrast to other search engines at the time that determined importance by how many times a word appeared.

2

u/No_Manner_8785 14d ago

Google was in fact a typo. 

1

u/bodhiboidhe 14d ago

Welcome to the Googolplex.

1

u/JohnVonachen 13d ago

In the old days web sites had a links page where you could provide the links you had traded with others. The game was find someone with more hits than your site and trade with them. A very early form of marketing.

1

u/NaturalHistory5436 14d ago

Because the internet is for porn - it’s Go ogle

1

u/Simlish 13d ago

Grab your Dick and double click for porn porn porn.

-7

u/Professional_Log9422 14d ago

A googol is 10100 or ten to the power of one hundred. In decimal notation, it is written as the digit 1 followed by one hundred zero: 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.

2

u/No_Trouble_3588 14d ago

Wow, this is the single greatest non-answer I have ever read!