7 famous companies that originally had different names BACKRUB // GOOGLE Google has its origins in "BackRub", a research project that was begun in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University. By 1997, the Google co-founders decided that the BackRub name just wasn’t good enough and came up with "Googol," during a brainstorming session. Googol is the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes, while googolplex is 1 followed by googol zeros. BRAD’S DRINK // PEPSI Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961.