How Many Zeros in a Googol?
A googol has 100 zeros: it is the number 1 followed by exactly 100 zeros, written in scientific notation as 10100. The term was coined in 1920 by Milton Sirotta, the nine-year-old nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner, who asked his nephew to name an unimaginably large number. A googol is larger than the total estimated number of atoms in the observable universe, which is approximately 1080 — meaning a googol exceeds the atom count by a factor of 1020 (100 billion billion). Despite its astronomical size, a googol is still a precisely defined, finite number. Learn more about jillion zeros.
A googol has
100
zeros
- Written Form
- 1 followed by 100 zeros
- Scientific
- 10¹⁰⁰
How Many Zeros Are in a Googol?
A googol has exactly 100 zeros. Written out in full, it looks like this: Learn more about how many zeros in a googolplex.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
In scientific notation, 10100 tells you everything: the exponent 100 is the number of zeros following the leading 1. The googol is notable for being one of the first "named" large numbers defined purely for the purpose of having a name for something vast, rather than arising from a specific scientific application.
| Number | Zeros | Notation |
|---|---|---|
| Trillion | 12 | 1012 |
| Centillion | 303 | 10303 |
| Googol | 100 | 10100 |
| Googolplex | 10100 | 10(10100) |
Is a Googolplex 10 Times a Googol?
No — this is a common misconception. A googolplex is not simply 10 × googol. A googolplex is 10 raised to the power of a googol (10googol), not 10 multiplied by a googol. Ten times a googol would be 10 × 10100 = 10101 — a number only slightly larger than a googol. A googolplex (1010100) is incomparably larger than that. The confusion arises because "times" and "to the power of" sound similar in casual speech, but they represent entirely different operations. Related: Zeros in a googolplexian.
How Many Millions Are in a Googol?
There are 1094 millions in a googol. Since 1 million = 106, dividing a googol (10100) by a million gives 10100 ÷ 106 = 1094. That is a 1 followed by 94 zeros — itself an absurdly large count. For comparison, 1094 is still larger than the number of atoms in the universe (1080) by a factor of 1014. This illustrates why the googol, despite its playful origin, represents a genuinely incomprehensible scale.