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'."

Origional Founders?

[the_2nd_coming]

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

Little Known Fact...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Lazy Mistake

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Harumph!

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Re:Whaa??

[JanusFury]

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...

Re:Whaa??

[JaxWeb]

I know what you mean - all they had to do was a quick Google search to come up with a host [google.co.uk] of tutorials!

Call themselves geniuses...

Kogal?

[tom1974]

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.

names

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gmail security breach..

[aslate]

Because there are already enough dupes, without making one for every time someone misses an article [slashdot.org]

Sigh

[Scrameustache]

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!

WOW!

[nomadic]

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

Re:I Feel Lucky

[Scrameustache]

"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 ;-)

Accident my foot!

[SlashCrunchPop]

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

Re:6 types of email users

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Whaa??

[wfberg]

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!

I Feel Lucky

[Rie Beam]

"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...

Re:6 types of email users

[Xeo 024]

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.

Re:And here I thought...

[tomhudson]

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 [timhortons.com] instead of Tidbits ...
... mmmm ... fresh timbits served up via the Internet - now we're talking!

Re:Lazy Mistake

[Feanturi]

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

Re:Origional Founders?

[Brad1138]

Columbus?

Re:I Feel Lucky

[Uber Banker]

"I feel lucky" is nearly never used.

Except when concealing goatse.cx links.

Excitement

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

The web speaks of 4 kinds of searchers...

[Zachary Kessin]

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

Re:Harumph!

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Little Known Fact...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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

Re:Whaa??

[88NoSoup4U88]

And if they did not have the information at hand at that time, they could have just googled it...

Ohwaitasecond..

Re:The annoying "Did you mean" feature

[Kafir]

Did you mean: abbreviations [google.com]