How did Adobe get its name
Adobe is the name of a river. One of the founders of Adobe,
John Nack, lives in Los Altas in California. This river runs behind his house. This is how Adobe got its name.
Story behind how Apple got its name
The founder of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs used to work in an Apple Farm. When he decided to start his business, he joked with his friends that if they did not suggest a name for his company he will then name it as Apple Computers. Obviously his friends could not come out with a name and hence Steve named it as Apple Computers. The rest is history.
What does Google Mean?
This is an interesting one. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google. Can you believe that the Google got its name because of a spelling mistake?
When they were studying in Stanford University, they worked on a project report to create an online Search engine. Their aim was simple. When someone searched for a keyword, the result should fetch huge number of relevant sites. In fact they wished for Googol number of results. Yes Googol represents a number which is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Therefore they wanted to name it as googol. But when they submitted their project report for funding to an investor, the investor gave a cheque which was payable to ‘Google’ instead of Googol. So that was a spelling mistake.
But Larry and Sergey decided to keep it as google and thats how the name came about.
Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore are the founders of Intel. Initially they wanted to name it as “Moore Noyce” Later they found that there was another company with that name which ran a group of hotels. Therefore, they decided to look for another name. Then they were toying with the name ‘More Noise’. They thought, for a semiconductor company this name could be a wrong name. Then for the first year they used ‘NM Electronics’ as their company name. Finally, Intel got its name as a short form of INTegreated ELectorinics.
Microsoft
Bill Gates named Microsoft from two words. Microcomputer and Software. In year 1975, Bill Gates wrote a letter to his colleague Paul Allen, he wrote as Micro-Soft. But in 1976 they registered the name Microsoft as a single name.
Yahoo
The first name of Yahoo was “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. In 1994 it changed its name to Yahoo. The name was taken from a phrase from Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels. YAHOO is the short form of the phrase “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. This word refers to a barbaric and uncivilized youth. The founders Jerry Yang and David Filo wanted to choose this name as they wanted themselves to be wittingly categorized thus.