Looked this up this morning.
A googol is ten to the 100th power or a one followed by 100 zeros.
The term was coined in 1938 by a scientist's nine year old.
I don't remember ever hearing the term in college but do remember Carl Sagan discussing it on the 1981 Cosmos series and apparently the term was used in a 1963 Peanuts comic strip.
Going further, a googolplex is one followed by a googol.
Carl Sagan said on his program that writing a googolplex out in numerals would be impossible since doing so would require more space than the known universe occupies.
The people who created Google search had a googol in mind when they come up with the name.