Would Google have made it as 'BackRub'?

[Chatative]

The dark art of choosing a company name (main source)

Interesting little article here. Did you know Google started out as 'BackRub' in its first incarnation?

1996 - Larry and Sergey begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth.

I couldn't imagine that taking off... I'm sure students at Stanford loved the name but it's a bit too quirky for worldwide domination if you ask me.

Here are some other name changes:

Brands and their former names

Sony (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering)
Yahoo (Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web)
Nintendo (Marafuku Company)
AOL (Quantum Computer Services)
IBM (Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation)
Pepsi (Brad's Drink)
Snickers (Marathon)

Apparently Facebook was originally called "TheFacebook".

 

[spudgun]

I'm old enough to remember the name change from Marathon to Snickers (and the ensuing national soul-searching)

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

Marathons will always be Marathons to me... what the fuck all this Snickers bizniz is about is beyond me