Does anyone know the origin of the words google or yahoo?

Question

Apologies to Evans GB N. Great enquiring minds think alike!

Answer 1

A Yahoo is a crass person (Merriam-Webster 10th Collegiate).  

Google does not appear in that dictionary or in the American Heritage Dictionary, although Googol does, which is a very large number - 10 raised to the power 100.  

However, both Yahoo and Google were either made up or adapted for use on the internet by the founders of the services.

Answer 2

Google means to look for something or to search as in "having a google". it's an old word. Yahoo! was an expression of speed and success used by cowboys etc such as "Yaahhhoooo!" so it came to mean something great.

Try looking in a proper Oxford English dictionary, not an American one!

Answer 3

I'm guessing its just internet language, much like the texting language kids use today.

Answer 4

Google comes from the number a Googol, which is 10 to the power 100 (10 plus one hundred zeros).

Yahoo comes from characters in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". They are deformed creatures whom Gulliver encounters whilst on his travels.  

Answer 5

Google comes from the expression "google eyes" which is from the Betty Boop's cartoons of the 1920's. The term "google eyes" originated with doll makers of Germany who invented doll eyes that had a pupil in them that move around inside a clear enclosure. The tern "google" is most likely of Yiddish origin.

Yahoo is a Appalachian salutation predominate in the Smokey Mountains. For greeting across canyons and narrow valleys. Similar to the Swiss yodel.

Answer 6

I ot this from wikipedia:

The name "Google" originated from a common misspelling of the word "googol",[19][20] which refers to 10100, the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros.

Yahoo! was chosen because the people who created it liked the word and its general meaning; they had to add the ! because Yahoo is already the registered name of a brand of bbq sauce.

interesting question!

Answer 7

wasn't yahoo: Yet Another Hierarchicalal Object Oriented directory of web links

ask the guys who started it: Jerry Yang & David Filo

In January 1994, Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website named "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other web sites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to search-able index of pages.

In April 1994, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is a backronym for this name, but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."[1]

Answer 8

I know that google most likely originated from the word 'googol' which means many (1 followed by 100 zeros, to be precise).