In 1996, two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created a unique search engine called “BackRub” that ran on the school’s server. After one year, BackRub’s bandwidth outgrew the university’s needs. Its creators rebranded BackRub into Google, a respelled reference to “googol.” It is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google began as a business after its founders accepted a $100,000 funding grant from Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim in August 1998. 
