The name of this year's hottest IPO, Google Inc., can be traced back to a walk in the woods just after World War I, when a boy told his mathematician uncle what to call the number one followed by a hundred zeros.

Mathematician Edward Kasner, a professor at Columbia University from 1910 to 1949, devised the concept to show the common features of whole numbers, no matter how large. But he needed a name. Writing out such a large number wouldn't do. Technically, a googol is 10 duotrigintillions, but formal names are rarely used...