Google is such a ubiquitous part of our daily lives that it’s easy to forget that the word has only existed for a few decades. It’s one of the strongest brands on the planet, and at this point, it’s virtually synonymous with searching the web.
However, when the first iterations of Google’s search engine went public, it had a very different name. A name that only a pair of nerdy Stanford University computer science Ph.D. students could think was a good idea.