Google’s Original Name Was “Backrub”…No, Seriously!

Happy 27th Anniversary to Google, though if history had gone differently, we might all be saying, “Let me Backrub that for you.” When Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin first cooked up their search project in 1996, they called it Backrub, because it analyzed the web’s “backlinks” to measure a site’s importance. Smart tech, awkward name. As Page later admitted, it didn’t exactly scream “future global brand.”

By 1998, the duo officially founded Google, riffing on the math term “googol” (the number 1 followed by 100 zeros). The new name better captured their audacious mission: to organize the seemingly endless information on the internet. Mission accomplished, and then some.

Today, Google handles 8.5 billion searches every single day. That’s everything from “divorce lawyer near me” to “best guitar solos of all time.” Tech journalist Kara Swisher famously said, “Google isn’t a search engine anymore, it’s oxygen.” And she’s not wrong, from Gmail to Maps to YouTube, the company has embedded itself into how we work, play, and even argue over trivia at the bar.

Of course, Google’s dominance has raised questions about privacy, advertising, and monopolies. But its cultural impact is undeniable: “Googling” became a verb, knowledge became democratized, and the world got a little smaller, all thanks to a project that might’ve stayed “Backrub.”

So, here’s to 27 years of searches, shortcuts, and the occasional rabbit hole. Backrub massaged the web, but Google shaped the world.

Doug O’Brien