Google is one of the biggest tech companies in history. Its impact on our daily lives is so huge that “to google something” has entered the language as a verb. If all the unique web pages in Google’s index were printed out, they would cover North America with a layer of paper five sheets thick. And if Google were a country, it would be the 70th richest country on the planet.
Of course, those figures are even more amazing when you consider that Google has only been around since 1998. And when Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started the company, it’s hard to imagine they had any idea how big it would eventually be. After all, in 1997, Google still needed a name.
The Google name itself is actually a misspelling of “googol.” And a googol is a mathematical term meaning “10 raised to the power of 100.” So, in other words, that’s 1 with 100 zeroes behind it. But that description may not give you the full impression of just how big a googol is.
For instance, it’s estimated that there are about 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the universe. So, if you somehow counted every atom that exists in the entire universe one by one, you wouldn’t even come close to a googol.