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Google vs. Googol
The verb google and the noun googol are commonly confused because they have similar pronunciations. Google is the word that is more common to us now, and so it is sometimes mistakenly used as a noun to refer to the number 10100. That number is a googol, so named by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, who was working with large numbers like 10100. Google, on the other hand, is the name of a search engine as well as a verb that refers to searching the Internet using the Google search engine. (The search engine’s name was inspired by the number: the founders of Google chose the name to reflect their mission “to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.”) You can remember that the number is spelled googol by remembering that a googol has lots of o’s.
Two related words, googolplex and googleplex, are also commonly confused. A googolplex is the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros; the Googleplex is the Mountain View, California headquarters of Google.
Did you know?
Around 1930, American mathematician Edward Kasner found himself working with numbers as large as 10 to the 100th power - that's a one followed by 100 zeroes. While it is possible to write that number using standard scientific notation, Dr. Kasner felt that it deserved a name of its own. According to his own account, Dr. Kasner asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to pick a name, promising the boy that he would use the word in the future. Milton made up the word googol, and so the enormous number was christened. Dr. Kasner kept his promise, and the word has spread and been widely adopted by mathematicians and the general public alike.
Examples of googol in a Sentence
David Hodari, NBC News, 31 Oct. 2024
That’s thought to be about 1 googol years from now, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
—Michael Irving, New Atlas, 31 Oct. 2024
The fine is significantly more than Google's market value of $2.15 trillion, but not higher than a googol, which contains 100 zeroes.
—Jonathan Limehouse, USA TODAY, 31 Oct. 2024
Over the unimaginable course of a googol years (1 followed by 100 zeros), black holes will swallow every last bit of matter, then boil away in a process known as Hawking radiation, leaving behind a sea of massless photons.
—Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 14 Mar. 2023
There are an infinite number of integers, and there are only a finite number of integers between zero and a googol; that doesn't make the former set somehow ontologically heavier.
—Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 4 June 2012
There is a googol, which is a one followed by one hundred zeroes.
—Matt Ford, The New Republic, 19 Oct. 2022
There is also a googolplex, a number that can only be theoretically written, which is one raised to the power of googol.
—Matt Ford, The New Republic, 19 Oct. 2022
Google is a play on the word googol, the term for the numeral one followed by 100 zeroes.
—CNN, 9 Mar. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Googol.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/googol. Accessed 12 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
googol
noun
coined by Milton Sirotta, age 9, and first used by his uncle Edward Kasner 1878–1955 American mathematician
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