Stories behind the Names of 10 Tech Companies
The creativity is the keyword for success in the technology world. The name of the company also comes in this creative category. You may wonder how the big tech companies decided their names. Some of these names may resemble their work and some may not.
If you are interested in knowing the stories behind names of the tech companies, you are at the right place.
Stories behind the Names of 10 Tech Companies
1. Google
Google is the only name in the technology worlds that become a verb. If people searching anything on search engine they simply said “please, google it.”
At the first when Larry Page and Sergey Brin the founders of Google were busy sitting and deciding for the name of search engine they came with the name ‘BackRub’ as it analyzes the web’s back links. After that a friend, Sean Anderson suggested ‘Googolplex’ where the googol means a number with 100 zeros at the back. Larry decided to take ‘Googol’ but domain was not available.The domain name ‘google’ was available and selected for the company. There are few other stories which you read here.
2. Facebook
The Facebook is the biggest social networking websites in the world. It was founded by Zukerberg in 2004. It was named as thefacebook.com for about a year and after that the domain was registered as facebook.com in year 2005. It was named on the directory of the students’ name that was used at the American University. It consist of name and photographs of the students and they are given to the students at the starting of the academic sections.
3. Adobe
It is popular belief that the founder named the company adobe as it means material composed of sand, clay, organic substances. But this is not true. The company named on the river Adobe creek in Los Altoos, California that ran behind the house of one of founder Jhon Warnock.
4. Twitter
The founders of the twitter were looking for the word that fits exactly on its working. They were confused with the status, jitter and twitch they came up with the twitch but they did not like it. After that they searched for the word in dictionary and came up with the word twitter which means ‘short burst of inconsequential information and chips from birds’.
5. Microsoft
The company Microsoft was established in the year 1975. It is belief of some people that Paul Allen was the one who came up with the name Microsoft not Bill Gates. The name was created by two names MICRO from Microprocessor and SOFT from Software.
6. Instagram
The founders were searching for a unique name that has meaning something like ‘right here, right now’. So they came up with the name ‘Instagram’ that formed by two words ‘Insta’ from ‘Instant Camera’ and ‘gram’ from ‘Telegram’.
7. Wikipedia
The Wikipedia is now the biggest platform of online knowledge. The name Wikipedia came up from the two words ‘Wiki’ which means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian and ‘Pedia’ from encyclopedia.
8. Yahoo
Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry and David. The name was decided on 1995 when its domain was purchased and company incorporated. The word yahoo symbolized to a rude, violent and noisy person but it was not its meaning. The Yahoo is acronym of ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’. I am not sure if Yahoo is really the acronym of these words or they found those words to justify Yahoo name.
9. Mozila
In 1994, Natscape members were deciding a name for their new browser to take on NCSA’s Mosaic browser. They wanted something unique and tough for the competition. They thought about the Godzila and by combining Godzila with Mosaic a named formed ‘Mozila’ which was perfect for the browser.
10. Skype
Skype was founded in 2003. Initially it had name ‘Skyper’ which was the combination of ‘sky’ and ‘peer-to-peer’ but the domain was not available so the company decided the name Skype.
