8/8/2019 A Village Named Google

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A village named Google

No I am not joking, there is infact a village with a name Google, situated on the banks of the Krishna

river, in the Riachur district of Karnataka. Its a small village with just about 1000 residents. Though the

village name resembles the Internet giant based out of California, the village does not have internet

connectivity and most are not aware that one of the worlds largest companies is named after their

village. The few who do are proud of their villages claim to fame.

There are two theories on how the village got its name. The first is a mythical story and springs from the

legend that 12th century saint poet Allama Prabhu lived in this village when he was travelling from

Basava Kalyan to Shreeshailam in Andhra Pradesh. The cave where he is believed to have lived has been

described as Gavi Gallu (cave of stone). The village was hence called Gavi Gallu. Over the years, it

became Googallu and now its Google. The underground cave exists. Devotees visit the cave which hosts

an idol of the saint by crawling through a hole in the ground.

However historians has another story, which seems closer to the truth. According to them the village

was named after rocks that seemed to sing. The name comes from 'Kooguva Kallu' (stones that make a

pleasant sound when river water strikes them).

''The sound wasn't produced by river water but by people who wanted to communicate with villagers in

far-off places,'' explains S K Aruni, assistant director of Indian Council of Historical Research. ''In ancient

times, people would send signals to far-off villages by hitting rocks with small sonorous stones. This

produced cup-like marks in the rocks. Prehistoric rocks with such cup marks are found in several places

in the Krishna river basin, such as Watkal, Hunasagi, Hebbal Burj and other villages in Gulbarga and

Raichur districts. So, it's possible that a village with such rocks was called Kooguva Kallu,'' he adds. (as

quoted in one of the article appeared on this in Times of India). If this true then the steams out from the

way people used to communicate, which is what the cyber world Google helps us do.

How Google got its name? Heres the genesis

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their initial search engine "BackRub," named for its analysis of

the web's "back links." Larry's shared his office with several other graduate students, including Sean

Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira. In 1997, Larry and his officemates discussed a number of

possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology.

Sean and Larry were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name - something

that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word

"googolplex," and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, "googol" (both words refer to

specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of theInternet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for

registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name

spelled as "google.com," which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took

the step of registering the name "google.com" for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration

record dates from September 15, 1997).