A googol is a number followed by one hundred zeros. The word was created by Professor Edward Kasner in the 1930s and used in a book of his in 1940. Kasner's descendants are getting set to battle Google, saying that the US-based company profited at their expense.

Personally I think that Google does incorporate the theory of googol in their site. When you get a search return you get a "Gooooooooooogle" at the bottom of the page where each "o" is a link to a results page. It seems pretty obvious that these are in tribute to the many zeros in a googol. But does this constitute financial gain at the expense of the family? Intellectual property experts don't seem to think so.

"It would be an uphill struggle to try to assert any legitimate claim," said David Gourlay, a senior associate at the Dundas and Wilson Technology Group.

Gillian Cameron, a partner in the intellectual property and technology department at Maclay, Murray & Spens, said: "They would have to show the family had used the word as a trademark and it had somehow been misappropriated, which doesn’t appear to be the case.

"Or they could argue that Google were piggy-backing on the goodwill of the mathematician, and somehow people associated googol with Mr Kasner," he added. "Again, this would be doubtful.

Kasner was an intelligent and middlingly successful mathematician who's single claim to fame is the description of a number that is never used except as an example of a really big number. The only problem being, of course, that he didn't get famous for it. Could anybody have named Kasner as the creator of "googol" before reading this?

I think the Kasner clan needs to sit down and stifle.