How your favorite search engines got their Names?

Search Engines are our window to the world of Web giving us access to the vast source of information in seconds. Intrigued by any question, phenomenon, theory or as simple thing as meaning of your Name, the first thing that comes to our mind is “Let’s search it!!” By typing a few phrases or words in the search tab of these engines we get hundreds of links on the single topic. The power and importance of search engines can be gauged from the fact that approximately 12-13 billion Google searches are done in a month!! So, need not to say how important search engines have become in this digital world. Do you know how the major Search engines of the world got their name? Let’s find out.

GOOGLE

Two graduates Larry Page & Sergey Brin of Stanford University made this search engine as a part of their postgraduate project in 1996 and named it “ BackRub” mainly because their search engine searched through Backlinks.

 Later when in 1997 they wanted to register the company and buy a domain, they found the name “ BackRub” little inappropriate. So a friend of theirs suggested the name “Googol” which is  a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros ,this name seemed apt as it reflected Larry and Sergey's mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. Their friend not realizing that the word is spelled as “Googol” instead searched for “Google” to check the availability of domain. The name striked instantly and world’s largest search engine was coined.

YAHOO!

Interestingly,YAHOO!  was also invented by two of the Stanford graduates David Filo and Jerry Yang in January 1994 . It was started mainly to keep track of their personal interests on internet but slowly the list grew too long and a search engine was born. Initially they named it “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” obviously after their names but later they changed it to YAHOO! in April 1994 which is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”

Do you know that Yahoo essentially gave up on search in 2010? Yes its true! .YAHOO! handed over  the keys  to Microsoft to serve up Bing search engine results on its websites and they are not providing their own algorithm search results anymore. They entered into a 10 year long contract which will be ending in 2015 itself and it is highly likely that the contract will be renewed i.e Yahoo's results will still be powered by Bing. Well that’s another story. Moving on to our next search engine BING itself.

BING

It is a Web Search engine from Microsoft , it was initially advertised as “Bing and decide” i.e mainly as a decision engine , But they changed the tagline to “Bing is for Doing” in 2012. Microsoft wanted to give a name to search engine which is simple , easy to pronounce and remember. It is said that Bing was inspired from word “Bingo” an exclamation word which means right on or  that something sought has been found which related well to the purpose of search engine. 

Some people have their own versions as to what BING can stand for like “Because its not Google” “Bing is not Google” and many more. Well there is nothing official about it!!

ASK

Ask.com founded in June 1996 by Garrett Gruener & David Warthen was initially named Ask Jeeves.com. Now you may be wondering who this guy Jeeves is? Jeeves is a fictional character from P.G. Wodehouse’s one of the best selling comic creations “Carry on, Jeeves”. In these novels Jeeves is a personal valet of Bertram Wilberforce and manages to rescue his master from awkward situations through his intelligence. So, the basic idea was to have your personal saviour like Jeeves and get answers to all your questions. That’s cool! Your personal Jeeves at your service.

 However in 2005 the company phased out Jeeves from the name. He was stated to be “going into retirement” and the search engine name was changed to “Ask.com” as we know it today.

It is very interesting to see how every company name has a story behind it. Whether its tossing a coin by HP to decide the company name or spelling mistake by founders of Google. These stories are always fun to know and I am here at your service to take you through these interesting facts and stories. So keep reading.