googol

noun

goo·gol ˈgü-ˌgȯl

: the figure 1 followed by 100 zeros equal to 10¹⁰⁰

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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.

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web 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 Googology comes from googol, the most famous, and smallest, of the really big numbers. —

Melissa Mohr, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 June 2020 Google takes its name from the number googol, which is a 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. —

Brett Molina, USA TODAY, 27 Sep. 2017 A googol is itself 1 with 100 zeros after it, which is many times bigger than the number of atoms in the universe, so a googolplex is far too big to possibly write out in decimal form. —

WIRED, 16 May 2017 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'googol.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.