[Ads-l] Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough

[Baker, John]

I see an article that provides earlier support for the Google/googol derivation:  “The Google folks (the name is taken from the word "googol," a mathematical term which means "really big number" - 10 to the 100th power if you want to be exact) explain that their software rates web pages on the basis of how many other web pages link to them.”  Lawton (Okla.) Constitution, at 7A (Jan. 4, 1999) (NewsBank Access World News).  Probably that could be further antedated with some other database.

I have long wondered whether the term did not owe as much to the verb google, to look obliquely or to squint, and the cartoon character Barney Google with the goo-goo-googly eyes (the latter is already referenced by Quote Investigator).  That seemed to me to be supported by early versions of the logo that seemed to show it googling in this sense.  However, the earliest versions of the logo do not have that, and the googol explanation was already prevalent, as shown above.


John Baker


From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of ADSGarson O'Toole
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2024 10:03 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Quote Origin: I Had Exactly Four Seconds To Hot Up the Disintegrator, and Google Had Told Me It Wasn't Enough

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The popular writer of detective fiction Raymond Chandler crafted the
statement in the subject line in 1953.
Was Chandler a secret time traveler? Probably not.

Chandler wrote a letter to his friend which contained a jargon-filled
passage mocking science fiction:

[Begin excerpt]
Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction. It's a scream. It is
written like this: "I checked out with K 19 on Aldabaran III, and
stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop.
. . .
The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already
risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and
Google had told me it wasn’t enough. He was right."
They pay brisk money for this crap?
[End excerpt]

Were the founders of the company that became Google, Sergey Brin and
Larry Page, inspired by Chandler's words? Probably not.

The name of the search engine Google was inspired by the enormous
number googol which is 10^100. Larry Page misspelled the word when he
selected the name and registered the internet address according to the
book "In the Plex" by journalist Steven Levy.

Here is a link to the QI article.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/09/16/hot-sf/<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/09/16/hot-sf>

Feedback welcome
Garson

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