Google Calls In The Language Police For Helping Pop Stars Have Sex
from the google-got-me-laid dept
dsg writes in with an article all about Google's struggles to keep "google" out of the dictionary in order to avoid the fate of such once-trademarked-now-generic words like Kleenex, Rollerblade, Bandaid and Xerox. Google is a bit upset, mostly, at the use of Google as a verb, as in "I googled him" to mean "I did a search of his name". The one thing that I wonder about, though, is that I've never heard anyone use google as a verb in a case where they weren't actually using Google to then do the search. It seems like "google" as a verb applies to searching with Google. I've never heard anyone say something like "I googled on AllTheWeb". That just doesn't make any sense. Anyway, I've seen similar stories to this one before about Google's language police trying to stop people from using "google" improperly, but this one has an amusing twist. Pop star Robbie Williams claims that Google "got me laid". Williams, not nearly as popular in the US as he is in the UK, says that US women will reject his advances... until they Google him (er... I mean, until they "run a search on the search engine Google for him"). Then, they're willing to sleep with him (or so he says). Who knew Google had such power? Is there another business model for them coming out of this?
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Brand Dilution
Sure, right now Google is the king of search, and you "google for info" ON Google.com. Fine.
But as the verb gets more and more common, it will be used in other contexts, to where it becomes just a synonym for "to search." You may "google" your dresser (looking for that rogue sock), "google" the mall (to find the perfect whatever), "google" the bar (to find "the hot chick/dude").
I think it'll go that way no matter what Google does because they cannot control what people say or write in non-commercial ways. Sure, they can get the press to stop using the word (AP has a bunch of rules for this).
But as the term becomes generic to the population, it's only a matter of time before it becomes allowed officially.
The genie is out of the bottle...
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Google is just following trademark law
- Daniel H
daniel_etc.blogspot.com
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