Etymology Map
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Google

3 stages from American English to English.

Today it means to search for information on the internet

Where does the word "google" come from? It comes from American English googol, passing through American English before entering English (2000s).

1
Stage 1 of 3
googol
American English · 1920
"10^100"
the number 10 to the power 100, named in 1920 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta for his uncle, the mathematician Edward Kasner, who published it in Mathematics and the Imagination (1940)
2
Stage 2 of 3
Google
American English · 1997
"a search engine"
Larry Page and Sergey Brin's search engine, whose domain was registered on 15 September 1997 with 'googol' misspelled
3
Stage 3 of 3
google
English · 2000s
"to search the web"
the verb 'to google' entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006
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Read the full story

Google’s story begins in American English: googol meant “10^100.” The number 10 to the power 100, named in 1920 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta for his uncle, the mathematician Edward Kasner, who published it in Mathematics and the Imagination (1940). Within American English, it grew into Google by 1997. Larry Page and Sergey Brin's search engine, whose domain was registered on 15 September 1997 with 'googol' misspelled. It reached English by 2000s as google. The verb 'to google' entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006. Today, google means to search for information on the internet.