Google was originally called "BackRub".
Google Started as 'BackRub' (And Yes, It's Real)
Before Google became a verb, it was called something far less catchy: BackRub. In 1996, Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their experimental search engine with a name that would've made every marketing professional wince.
The name wasn't random weirdness. BackRub got its name from the technology that made it revolutionary—its analysis of "back links" (links pointing to a webpage). While other search engines of the era simply counted how many times keywords appeared on a page, BackRub examined the web's link structure to figure out which pages were actually important.
The Tech Behind the Terrible Name
Page's insight was borrowed from academia: just like research papers gain credibility from citations, webpages could be ranked by who linked to them. If important sites linked to your page, you were probably important too. This became the foundation of PageRank, the algorithm that would eventually power Google.
By August 1996, BackRub had already indexed 75 million pages—occupying 207 GB of storage and consuming nearly half of Stanford's entire network bandwidth. The university's IT department was probably thrilled.
From BackRub to Google
The transformation happened fast. On September 15, 1997, Larry registered the domain "google.com"—reportedly a misspelling of "googol" (the mathematical term for 10^100), meant to represent the massive amount of information the search engine could organize.
BackRub officially became Google Inc. on September 4, 1998. The company started in a garage, as all proper Silicon Valley origin stories require, and the rest is internet history.
Today, "Google" is one of the most valuable brands on Earth. "BackRub"... well, let's just say the rebrand was a good call. Imagine telling someone to "just BackRub it" when they ask a question.
The Legacy Lives On
While the BackRub name disappeared, its core innovation didn't. The link analysis technology that gave BackRub its awkward name became the secret sauce that made Google dominant. Every time you search something and get relevant results instantly, you're benefiting from that same "back link" analysis Larry and Sergey pioneered in a Stanford dorm room.
The name might have been forgettable, but the technology changed how humanity accesses information. Not bad for a research project with a cringeworthy name.