A googol is greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which has been variously estimated from 1079 up to 1081.[2][3]
Fewer than a googol Planck times have elapsed since the Big Bang (the current figure stands at around 8×1060 Planck times). On the other hand, the volume of the observable universe is about 9×10185 cubic Planck lengths.
From the previous figures it can be seen that a list of positions of every particle at every possible instant of time, at the maximum possible accuracy, would contain well over a googol entries (of the order of 10325), but still far less than a googolplex.
Avogadro's number, 6.02214179 × 1023, is exactly the number of 12C atoms in 12 grams (0.012 kg) of unbound 12C in its ground state. It is perhaps the most widely known large number from chemistry and physics. Avogadro's number is less than the fourth root of a googol.
Black holes are presumed to evaporate because they faintly give off Hawking radiation; if so, a supermassive black hole would take about a googol years to evaporate.[4]
A googol is roughly equal to the factorial of 70; this number is 1.1987... × 10100. It follows that there are more than a googol ways to arrange 70 objects into a sequence.
The odds are approximately one in a googol that 333 coins tossed in the air will all land heads up (2333 = 1.7498... 10100) or that a person repeatedly throwing a pair of dice will roll double sixes 65 consecutive times. (3665 = 1.4443 x 10101)
It would take approximately 11,256 googbibytes (1024100) to store every possible product of two primes in the RSA-1024 bit keyspace.[5]
The Shannon number, 10120, a rough lower bound on the number of possible chess games, is more than a googol.
A googol is considerably less than the number described in the ancient Archimedes' story of The Sand Reckoner, namely