It's funny to see that Google set its IPO goal on April 2004 to the mathematical constant e (in billions), but hit almost PI (also the mathematical constant, in billions) in Revenue in the planned year :)
I'm guessing we all know that Google was misspelling of the number Googol, however, I wonder how many of you know that the Googol was inspired by a cartoon character from the 1930's named Barney Google
I'm not sure which is correct, but wikipedia seems to think that the word 'googol' was first used by Edward Kasner in 1920:
The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew)
who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a
hundred zeros after it.
EDIT: After looking around some more, you seem to be correct:
"...[Kasner] asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a word. The youthful comic strip reader told Kasner to use "Google". Kasner agreed and in 1940 he introduced the words "googol" and "googolplex" in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination."
Interesting to note that 97% of their revenue comes from advertising. That's a weak spot for them, and surely they know it. If some better disruptive technology comes along they could have serious problems.
The rule of thumb I'd heard for when you're no longer a Noogler is when your Noogler balloon stops flying. (You're given a helium-filled mylar balloon with a Google happy face when you start; mine lasted about 5 months). That's almost always after when you've been there longer than 1% of the staff. I joined in January 09 when everyone thought the world was ending and the word on the street was "hiring freeze", so it was only a few percent in my case. But for someone who joined in say, 2005 and whose Noogler balloon lasted a while (I've heard of them flying for up to a year), it might've been up to 50% of the staff.
