In my previous post, I made the following comment about Google:

Look at Google for example.  Google is a nonsense word, a misspelling of a mathematical term for the number 1, followed by 100 zeroes.  Though one could argue that there is a logic to relating a mathematic search engine to a math term, the word as spelled means nothing.

Apparently, I was both wrong and right with that comment.  According to the official Google site the name Google came about as follows:

The name ‘Google’ is a play on the word ‘googol,’ coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. A ‘googol’ refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. It’s a very large number. In fact, there isn’t a googol of anything in the universe — not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google’s use of the term reflects our mission to organize the world’s immense (seemingly infinite) amount of information and make it universally accessible and useful.

So, as I noted in my article, the word is intended to be a mispelling of Googol.  The interesting thing is that the site represents the choice as having some deeper meaning, that it ties into the company’s mission statement.  However, in my opinion, it is much more likely that the name was chosen for its consumer friendliness than any philosphical ideal.