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Google Tidbits

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

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'."

4 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Apache by jcraveiro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That way of naming things is indeed very usual; for instance, "Apache Server", was named after its status of "a patchy server".. ;)

  2. 6 types of email users by Tellarin · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Some very interesting facts indeed.
    But the one that really caught my attention was the one about the 6 types of e-mail users. I'd really like more info on that.

    Anyone has any idea where to get more info on this? Still haven't found anything.

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    -- SouNerd.com
  3. Barney Google? by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Too bad... I thought it was a portmanteau of Googol, ten to the hundredth power, and Barney Google ("Baaaaarrrney Google! with the goo- goo- googly eyes!"), whose name is correctly spelled with a -gle. Barney Google was a comic strip icon of the Roaring Twenties, and the title of the Billy Rose hit song of the same name and era.

    Barney's horse Spark Plug was so popular that Sparky became an common sobriquet; indeed that is the source of Charles M. Schulz's nickname.

    Google lives on in rare cameo appearances in the comic strip, generally known as "Snuffy Smith," whose full title is actually "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith"

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  4. New College Thing by BSDevil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Based on what you say, this seesm to be the new form of College recruiting Google uses. A few months ago Google came and visited McGill, and did a 2-hour presenation on the basics of GFS, but primarily on MapReduce. Included was a few demos by the presenter (Karel someone - used to be a McGill prof) demo'ing some of the internal MapReduce funcctions, like calculating the number of links between words and the number of MapReduce keys needed, and so forth.

    Plus, they gave out free pens and T-Shirts. The actual recruiting part took up about 10 minutes - only a brief mention of what it was like working at Google. Good presentation tho.

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    Cue The Sun...