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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Thanks for your feedback and the helpful citation, John. I agree that
it would be a good idea to include it in an article that was focused
on the origin of the name "Google". Finding the earliest evidence is
important. It is also valuable to gather testimony from the people
involved.

The stories I came across differed in details. For example, a 2004
version of the tale stated that Sean Anderson misspelled the word
"googol" as "google":

https://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html

[Begin excerpt]
Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of
the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly
suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean is
not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for
the name spelled as "google.com," which he found to be available.
Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering
the name "google.com" for himself and Sergey (the domain name
registration record dates from September 15, 1997).
[End excerpt]

In the end, I went with the citation from "In the Plex" because
journalist Steven Levy spoke extensively with Sergey Brin, Larry Page,
and many Googlers. Hence, the version Levy presented was reasonable
for an article focused on a curious Raymond Chandler quotation.

Garson

On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 10:26 PM Baker, John
<000014a9c79c3f97-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> 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
>
> External Email - Think Before You Click
>
>
> 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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