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Word Smith: Googolplex

Our precocious nephew, Andy LaFontaine, always peppered us with questions: “Who is the smartest person in history?” “How did the universe start and how fast is it growing?” “What is the largest number in the world?” It was really that third question on numbers that meant the most to Andy, because he knew the answer: Googolplex. Having not heard of it, he proceeded to tell us it was a number so large that there was not enough room in the universe to display all of the zeros, AND it would take longer to write out those zeros than we have time in the universe.

“How did you know that word?” we asked. “My fourth grade math teacher taught me!” he beamed.

This proclamation was nearly thirty years ago now and Oh, how the language of math and spelling have evolved since then.

Googol or Google?

Today (September 15, 2026), according to the Wall Street Journal, is the 29 anniversary of the registration of the web domain www.google.com. The Stanford University coders behind the search engine are billionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They had initially named their project “Backrub,” before renaming it Google. Apparently the spelling as Google was play on the word Googol, which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

The Telecom for All icon below, declares that the spelling of the name Google was accidental. It came from a spelling error that was made by Brin and Page, who were under the impression that they were going for the word Googol as their web domain. Their spelling error (or brilliance) stuck, and their superior coding and math skills made the name permanent.

My mother, who was a notoriously poor speller, used to quote articles from Psychology Today, declaring that “spelling is not a sign of intelligence.” Also she would paraphrase Andrew Jackson, “It’s a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.” As a God-fearing woman she left out a key word in her quotation — “damn,” that Jackson used before the word “poor.” As someone who struggles with spelling from time to time myself: “Damn Right!”

Happy 29th birthday, Google.