Wild to think one of the most valuable names on the planet came from a typo nobody bothered to fix. Like, they had a misspelled domain registered and just kept it because "eh, looks good." No brand research, no focus group, nothing — pure luck.
And the ironic part is that "mistake" ended up being the smartest move without even trying: "Googol" already meant something (a number), so it'd have been easier to fight over in court later. "Google" meant nothing at all, so it became 100% theirs. A typo that accidentally trademark-proofed the brand decades down the line.
>Wild to think one of the most valuable names on the planet came from a typo nobody bothered to fix. Like, they had a misspelled domain registered and just kept it because "eh, looks good." No brand research, no focus group, nothing — pure luck.
I had a similar thought, and that was, these are the smartest men in the room, literately, and they didn't catch that error...
I guess sometimes its better to be lucky than good. I do think that if they had tested those two names in a focus group, Google would likely have won out.