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Google Tidbits

XeroCool writes "Alan Williamson got invited to BayCHI lecture at PARC by Marissa Mayer (Product Manager for Google) to talk about google and get the facts. They both were in a room and Alan got some good facts about Google. One fact was: The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'."

27 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Origional Founders? by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 5, Funny

    is there some type of founder that is other than the original one?

    --



    I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    1. Re:Origional Founders? by Brad1138 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Columbus?

      --
      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  2. Little Known Fact... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot was originaly supposed to be Slashbot, home of the slicing, dicing, humanity destructing robot of death. Good thing for us they had a spelling error in the domain name and just made it news for nerds.

    1. Re:Little Known Fact... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Now you know why someone's signature used to say "news for herds, stuff that spatters". :-)

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  3. Lazy Mistake by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
    A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'."

    Sheesh... you would think that they could have at least Googled for the correct spelling.

    1. Re:Lazy Mistake by Feanturi · · Score: 2, Funny

      And they still haven't looked it up apparently, for when you type in 'google' you still don't get Did you mean googol?

  4. Harumph! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 3, Funny

    Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

    Please could somebody let my boss know. Pretty please.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
    1. Re:Harumph! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Please could somebody let my boss know. Pretty please.

      I already know that. What I'd like to find out is why you are posting on Slashdot on company time?

  5. Re:Whaa?? by JanusFury · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yeah, totally! How could anybody not know that the A tag is used to make a link? It's totally obvious, especially since Link starts with an L, and Hyperlink starts with an H...

    --
    using namespace slashdot;
    troll::post();
  6. Re:Whaa?? by JaxWeb · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know what you mean - all they had to do was a quick Google search to come up with a host of tutorials!

    Call themselves geniuses...

    --
    - Jax
  7. Kogal? by tom1974 · · Score: 4, Funny

    10.# The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'

    Wow that was close. Some more typo and we'd all be kogaling instead.

  8. names by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't you guys find embarassing the history of all these "I-thought-I-knew-how-it-was-spelled" names? Google, Novell, Cisco (?) etc. Seems like all those ivy founders had major educational problems. I would probably modded as troll if I were to say that another funny coincidence strikes me - they are all americans. But I'm not saying it ;-)

    Excuse my poor english, as I'm not a native speaker, just a poorly educated east-european.

  9. Re:Gmail security breach.. by aslate · · Score: 2, Funny

    Because there are already enough dupes, without making one for every time someone misses an article

  10. Sigh by Scrameustache · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looking at Googol and then Google you have to say it was one hell of a lucky mistake. Google rolls off the tounge and everyone knows it's easy to spell where as googol is just an annoying nameto think about.

    Yes, it's amazing how a word you've seen and heard almost everyday for the past, oh, five years is easier to say and spell than one you aren't familiar with. What an incredible coincidence!

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  11. WOW! by nomadic · · Score: 4, Funny

    Programmers who can't spell? Now I've heard everything!

  12. Re:I Feel Lucky by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

    Exactly, "I'm Feeling lucky" keeps "Google" search from looking naked for some odd reason. It's Genious.


    I think people don't use it because if they do, they feel like google is calling them "punk" while routing them ;-)

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  13. Accident my foot! by SlashCrunchPop · · Score: 5, Funny

    As I already pointed out quite a while ago, the name was not chosen by accident and it should be read as go ogle. Porn is behind everything, man!

  14. Re:6 types of email users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't know about Google, but here at MSN, we classify email users this way:

    1. Those that feel physically inadequate and need viagra and penis enhancements.
    2. Those that hate their careers and need diplomas.
    3. Those that are lonely and want to know about every porn site in existence
    4. Those that need cash quick and don't mind helping out friendly Nigerian Officials
    5. Those that need good luck and don't mind sending out chain mail to get it.
    6. Those that want cheap prescription drugs from reputable companies in the back of alleys.

    Here at MSN, we're committed to helping our users so we start off by by giving our users access to all these value added emails. As we get to know users better through Microsoft patented Big Brother[TM] technologies, we tailor or filters so that you can get more of the informative emails advertising that you need.

    Try out MSN. We're eager to serve you.[1]

    ------
    [1] See http://members.cox.net/kaiotea/serveman.htm
    or http://www.scifilm.org/tv/tz/twilightzone3-24.html

  15. Re:Whaa?? by wfberg · · Score: 4, Funny

    How could someone not know HTML, yet be able to write googles algorithm? Dont most programmers laugh at the easyness of html?

    Yeah. And French is easy too. Ten year olds speak it!

    --
    SCO employee? Check out the bounty
  16. I Feel Lucky by Rie+Beam · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button."

    Well, it makes sense if you think about it. Everyone wants to feel lucky...and I doubt a "I feel apathetic towards the world and my creator" could fit there, anyway...

  17. Re:6 types of email users by Xeo+024 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, sadly it doesn't elaborate on that.

    I'm thinking it's something like this:

    1. People who use AOL e-mail
    2. ???
    3. ???
    4. ???
    5. ???
    6. Profit!

    No wait, wrong list, nevermind.

  18. Re:And here I thought... by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Funny
    there was going to be a new Google service, Google Tidbits. Disappointed I am.
    Not as disappointed at all of us canucks who are conditioned to seeing Timbits instead of Tidbits ...
    ... mmmm ... fresh timbits served up via the Internet - now we're talking!
  19. Re:I Feel Lucky by Uber+Banker · · Score: 2, Funny

    "I feel lucky" is nearly never used.

    Except when concealing goatse.cx links.

  20. Excitement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    They both were in a room and [...]

    Wow, someone knows how to make a story sound exciting.

  21. The web speaks of 4 kinds of searchers... by Zachary+Kessin · · Score: 2, Funny

    The one who is wise,
    to him you show every detail of how to use the Google API to the last SOAP call

    The one who is contrary, for he will demand exact results on an poor query and be angry when google fails to produce

    The one who is foolish, who can not understand the basics of queries.

    and the one who does not know how to search. to him you will show the basics of how to search

    --
    Erlang Developer and podcaster
  22. Re:Whaa?? by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 4, Funny
    And if they did not have the information at hand at that time, they could have just googled it...

    Ohwaitasecond..

  23. Re:The annoying "Did you mean" feature by Kafir · · Score: 2, Funny

    Did you mean: abbreviations