According to Stanford’s David Koller, and Google’s own website, Page and Brin’s 1996 foray into the world of search engines was initially called “BackRub.”

Before being called Google, its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin called it BackRub, because the search engine relied on backlinks to estimate the importance of sites.

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their initial search engine "BackRub," named for its analysis of the web's "back links."

What was formerly called Backrub, a search engine that scoured the internet and ranked pages based on importance, was later named Google.

Google was originally called “Backrub” by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University.