Larry Page and Sergey Brin began Google as a research experiment while PhD students at Stanford University. They thought they could improve upon search engine algorithms by ranking pages not according to keyword density, but to the number of backlinks. Hence their original name for the engine, “Back Rub.” Fortunately, they decided to replace that name with an intentional misspelling of Googol, the name for the number one followed by 100 zeroes.
Page created the first Google logo using a free graphics program. It was based on the typeface Baskerville and had an exclamation point—an obvious rip-off of Yahoo! The next year, Google brought on a professional designer, Ruth Kedar, who pivoted to the slimmer Catull typeface. From there the logo underwent a number of minor alterations, finally losing its drop shadow and three-dimensional effect in 2013, a version that also controversially extended the cross bar of the “e.”
In 2015 Google introduced an entirely new typeface based on a proprietary sans-serif, not-so-imaginatively called Product Sans. The typeface is also shared by Google’s new parent company, Alphabet, where it appears in red.