How many zeros are there in a googol?

The story behind the answer

A googol is defined as 10^100, which means a 1 followed by 100 zeros. So the number of zeros in a googol is 100.

The term “googol” was coined by mathematician Edward Kasner’s 9-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to illustrate how a number can be unimaginably large yet still finite—far larger than estimates of atoms in the observable universe (~10^80). Its big sibling, the googolplex, is 1 followed by a googol zeros. Fun fact: the company Google took its name from “googol,” reflecting the vastness of information online. Memory tip: think “googol = go a goal of zeros”—a full 100 of them, and all those O’s in the word hint at the many zeros it contains.