Google.com Registered September 15, 1997: The BackRub Story

Larry Page registered google.com on September 15, 1997, while he and Sergey Brin were developing a search engine at Stanford University. The company did not yet exist. The date marks a naming and infrastructure decision between the earlier BackRub research project and Google Inc.’s incorporation in September 1998.

Why Page and Brin Built BackRub

Page arrived at Stanford for graduate study in the mid-1990s and began examining the web as a network of documents connected by links. Academic papers gain authority partly through citations. Page reasoned that links could provide related evidence about web pages: a page referenced by other important pages might deserve a higher ranking than one that merely repeated a search term.

Brin joined the project, bringing experience with data analysis. Their system crawled pages and studied links pointing back to each document, which led to the name BackRub. The ranking method became known as PageRank, a name associated both with web pages and Larry Page.

Search engines already existed. Some relied heavily on text frequency, while directories used human editors to organize websites into categories. Neither approach scaled comfortably with the web’s growth. Link analysis offered a way to use the web’s own structure as a signal, combined with conventional checks for where and how search terms appeared.

The project ran on improvised collections of computers. Stanford hosted an early service at google.stanford.edu, and the university later held a patent associated with PageRank. The research environment matters: Google began as an effort to improve information retrieval, not as a garage retailer or an advertising company.

How BackRub Became Google

The old name described the method but did not give the project an inviting public identity. In 1997, Page and colleagues discussed names suggesting a very large amount of indexed information. Stanford computer scientist David Koller later recorded an account from people present during the brainstorming.

Sean Anderson suggested “googolplex,” and Page favored the shorter “googol.” A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros. When Anderson checked domain availability, he searched for “google.com” rather than the mathematical spelling. The altered version was available, Page liked it and registered it within hours.

The domain record dates to September 15. That makes the date a useful entry on the 1997 calendar, but it should not be confused with incorporation. Registering a name created an address; it did not by itself create the company that later employed thousands of people.

The spelling story sometimes becomes a polished myth about a deliberate brand. Koller’s account is more ordinary and more interesting: a collaborative naming session, a keyboard, an available domain and a variation that sounded right.

What the Early Search Engine Did Differently

PageRank modeled links as more than a simple count. A link from a page that itself had strong links could contribute more than one from an isolated page. Importance flowed through the network, while a damping factor prevented rank from concentrating without limit.

Page and Brin’s research paper described other practical features. The system considered anchor text—the words used in a link—which could describe a page even when those words did not appear on the destination. It stored information about fonts and positions, helping distinguish a title from ordinary body text. It also emphasized efficient crawling, indexing and query processing.

These ideas did not make every result objectively correct. Ranking always involves choices, and web authors soon learned to influence search systems. But the combination produced results many users found cleaner and more relevant than crowded portal pages or simple keyword matches.

The minimal interface also became part of the identity. Instead of filling the home page with categories, headlines and services, Google placed the search box at the center. That design made the function immediately clear and kept page loading fast on dial-up connections.

From a Domain to a California Company

During 1998, the project attracted attention from investors. Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to Google Inc. before that legal entity was ready to deposit it. Page and Brin incorporated the company on September 4, 1998.

The new team moved into a Menlo Park garage owned by Susan Wojcicki. The garage was an early company office, not where the ranking research or the Google name began. Keeping the sequence straight avoids a common simplification:

1. Page and Brin developed BackRub at Stanford.
2. The Google name and domain arrived in September 1997.
3. Early investment helped support incorporation in September 1998.
4. The incorporated team moved into the garage and expanded the service.

That later milestone is covered in the article on Google’s 1998 incorporation. The two dates answer different versions of “When was Google founded?”

Why the September 1997 Date Still Matters

A domain registration can seem minor beside a product launch or corporate filing. In this case it fixed the public name under which the search engine would grow. “Google” became a company name, a product name and eventually a verb, while the mathematical reference continued to suggest immense scale.

The story also captures how much the commercial internet still allowed small academic teams to claim simple global addresses. A useful name, working service and university network could reach users before a formal corporation or advertising model existed.

Google later expanded into email, maps, video, mobile software, cloud computing and online advertising. That scale brought scrutiny over privacy, market power, publishing and how ranking systems influence public knowledge. None of those outcomes was settled by the domain purchase, but the address became their common point of entry.

September 15, 1997 is therefore best described narrowly and accurately: the day google.com was registered for a Stanford search project previously known as BackRub. The business followed the next year. See other technology and cultural dates on the full 1997 US calendar.