Britain and Greece on Tuesday disputed claims about why a prime ministerial meeting was cancelled, in a diplomatic row against a backdrop of ownership claims to ancient sculptures...

TL;DR: A wide range of free online courses from UC San Diego are available to

Sony’s profits between April and June slipped 17%, as worries grew about revenue damage from a strike in the movie sector

Inter manager Simone Inzaghi admits the club are interested in signing Benjamin Pavard from Bayern Munich - a player Manchester United have been looking to sign this summer.

Whoopi Goldberg asks Sunny Hostin if she's an 'umbrella parent' after the latter admitted to tracking her adult son's phone

Artificial intelligence darling Nvidia's upcoming earnings report could be a boost or a drag on a market already mired in the summer doldrums.

After declaring that Gabriel Henrique's performance was 'what she was waiting for', Sofia Vergara hits the golden bell for him

MLB Rumors: Cardinals have a concerning plan for the remainder of their offseason, a new Cubs trade target appears to be in the mix, could Randy Arozarena be traded this offseason?

BEIJING Tesla China has extended delivery time for its Model Y Long Range to between six and eight

Citigroup Inc. has dismantled its global team that provides commentary and analysis on foreign-exchange markets, according to people

'Strays,' which stars Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx as two stray dogs out for revenge against a neglectful dog owner, is no longer coming out in June

A world without Google would almost be akin to a world without water or air. Indeed, the internet behemoth’s power is so great that it’s even become its own verb. And sure, there are other search engines, but when have you ever heard someone say: “Let me just Bing that”? Yet, it turns out the iconic tech company could have had a very different fate had it stuck to its original name. That’s right, Google hasn’t always been Google. And at its inception back in 1996, it had a somewhat more risqué title. It was called… BackRub. Yep, BackRub. According to Standford University computer scientist David Koller, who wrote about the brand’s genesis back in 2004, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with the search engine's first name as a nod to its analysis of the web’s “back links”. However, a year after BackRub was born, Page and his officemates – including fellow graduate students Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira – discussed a number of possible alternatives to the massage-evoking moniker. According to Koller, the final, fateful brainstorming session occurred one day in September of that year. “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,” he recalled. “Sean verbally suggested the word ‘googolplex,’, and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, ‘googol’ (both words refer to specific large numbers). “ Anderson then searched the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available to use. But, since “Sean is not an infallible speller”, “he made the mistake of searching for the name spelt as ‘google.com,’ which he found to be available,” Koller continued. “Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name ‘google.com’ for himself and Sergey.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Sill, 25 years on from that simple domain name registration that would go on to change the world, people have shared their bewilderment that “BackRub” could have become a household name. “I could die without knowing that this was Google's old name,” one X/Twitter user commented. “What were they smoking back in 90s??” asked another. Meanwhile, a third responded with what we’re all now thinking: “Tbh I need a backrub.” At least the tech titans can now give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done with “Google”. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.