Google was originally called BackRub while Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed it at Stanford University.
Page and Brin began working on the search project in 1996. BackRub analyzed links between web pages, using them as signals about importance and relevance. This approach helped distinguish the project from search engines that relied more heavily on text matching.
The name Google was adopted in 1997, and Google Inc. was incorporated in 1998. The name refers to “googol,” the mathematical term for 10 to the power of 100, although the company name uses the spelling “Google.”
PageRank was the name of an important ranking system, not the project’s original name. Alphabet became Google’s parent company in 2015, while Google remained its largest operating business.