The 'Page' in PageRank not related to Larry Page?

That's what you can learn on Google Japan

[takagi]

On 'google.com' [google.com] you can read that the word 'Page' in PageRank stands for Larry Page and not for a page as in home-page.

The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank (tm), and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

But not on Google Japan. There you can find Larry Page is written in katakana as "rari- peiji" [google.co.jp] but when they write about PageRank [google.co.jp] the word is explained as "pe-ji jun'i" with "pe-ji" in katakana and "jun'i" (order, rank, precedence) in kanji. It is very common when writing about a page of a book, fax or internet-page to write it in katakana as "pe-ji". So on Google Japan PageRank is just the ranking of an internet-page.

[bill]

takagi you gotta get out more ;)

That bit of trivia seems to be well known around WebmasterWorld, but maybe it was lost in translation. I'm betting that it was a straight translation issue whether conscious or unconscious. It makes more sense to describe PageRank as a function relating to the web page rather than trying to get the Japanese populace to realize that Page can be a person's last name...let alone the founder's name. The description also works well the way it is now in Japanese; at least it seems logical to me.

[victor]

More to the point:

When are they going to introduce BrinRank?

[Woz]

takagi, what bill said!

Onya
Woz

[ergophobe]

This is typical of the fallacies that historians of science run up against all the time. Scientists are always writing after the fact about why they did something, but when you study their lab notes, it's often simply untrue.

Does anyone believe for a minute that at the very least the name was meant to be clever and to mean both and to be intentionally confusing?

[takagi]

Most likely they made up the link to Larry Page for legal reasons. If somebody else comes with a similar word (like 'Windows' <--> 'Lindows') it could help them to say from the start that Google came up with PageRank with 'Page' standing for Larry Page.

Just as Bill, I think that it was like in the movie: Lost in Translation.