How a Jungle Country Club Golfer Inspired the Google Brand Name

Billy DeBeck was an amateur golfer from New York who liked to play the St. Petersburg golf courses during the winter seasons. He and his wife lived at the Jungle Club Hotel from November 1928 until the following March. He became a friend and frequent golfing partner of Babe Ruth. In 1935, when Babe Ruth was mobbed by over 3,000 fans upon arrival at the St. Petersburg train station, police escorted Babe and his family to Billy DeBeck's car, which was used to transport the Ruth family to their St. Petersburg home.

What does this have to do with the Google brand?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, U.S. mathematicians Edward Kasner and James R. Newman were looking for a word to represent the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Kasner's young nephew suggested the word "googol," perhaps influenced by comic strip character Barney Google.
"According to [Google], the name is a play on googol and reflects the "mission" of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin "to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web."

1 Googol 
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Billy DeBeck was the cartoonist who created Barney Google, a popular cartoon strip that ran - in some form or another - in daily newspapers across the country from 1919 until 2001.

According to Billy DeBeck's Wikipedia entry "DeBeck is credited with introducing or popularizing a number of neologisms and catchphrases via Barney Google, including "heebie-jeebies", "horsefeathers", "hotsy totsy", "balls of fire", "time's a-wastin'", "touched in the head", and "bodacious"."

And now you know the rest of the story.

Billy DeBeck and terrier, 1929 (Source: The Devil Puppet on Flickr).

Billy DeBeck at Babe Ruth's 36th Birthday Party at the Jungle Hotel - St. Petersburg Times, Feb 8, 1930

Barney Google Song (warning: you may find this hard to get out of your head.)

Sources not previously cited for this post include the St. Petersburg Times, March 27, 1928 ("Barney Departs"), the St. Petersburg Times, March 5, 1935 ("Babe Is Nearly Mobbed By Big Crowd of Fans"), and Baseball by BSmile on Twitter.