Our beloved Google got it's name from Googol, which is a math term.
A googol is the large number 10100, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined in 1938 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner announced the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination. The Internet search engine, Google, was named as a play on the number googol.
A googol is "approximately" equal to the factorial of 70, and its only prime factors are 2 and 5. In binary it would take up 333 bits.
The googol is of no particular significance in mathematics, nor does it have any practical uses. Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in mathematics teaching.
A googol can be written in conventional notation, as follows:
1 googol = 10100 = 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
It is equal to ten duotrigintillion and a hundredth of a tretrigintillion.
A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeroes, or ten raised to the power of a googol: .
A googol is greater than the number of particles in the known universe, which has been variously estimated from 1072 up to 1087. Since a googol is the number of digits in a googolplex, it would therefore not be possible to write down or store the digits of a googolplex in decimal notation, even if all the matter in the known universe were converted into paper and ink or disk drives.
On a relevent news: Google might get sued by Googol in the name dispute.
Professor Edward Kasner came up with the word Googol, apparently at the suggestion of his 9-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta.
He used the term in the 1940s in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination. For the record a googol is 10 raised to the 100th power - or the number 1 followed by a hundred zeros.
In 1955 he died and much later a search engine called Google was born. His relatives claim that Kasner must be spinning in his grave. They believe Google has gained financially at their expense and they want to become IPO insiders to put his soul to rest.
Hacks from the Baltimore Sun interviewed Kasner's great-niece Peri Fleisher who is coincidently a compensation specialist for a Silicon Valley firm. She admitted that she was only four when Kasner died, and could only just remember him.
She said that although Google has bought attention to the name, it has not bought attention to Kasner’s work. Google was not using the concepts, but just capitalising on the name, she said. And who is the heir to Kasner's work? Step forward Fleisher's son, who has the rights to the book.
She said she had written to Google but it had never replied. She said that Google is playing off that number and not compensating them even a little bit. Ethically, it could have been more giving. She does not want cash just the opportunity to operate as insiders for the IPO.
Now they are thinking of suing.
So what's in a name, after all!
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