Google has taken exception to its name becoming part of everyday speech and has ordered the media to stop using its name as a verb.
“To google” entered the online vernacular as the popularity of the market-leading search engine exploded in recent years.
In the past two months two dictionaries have added the word. Merriam-Webster classed it a transitive verb: “to use the Google search engine to obtain information ... on the World Wide Web”.
It included the term’s etymology - “Google, trademark for a search engine”. The latest Oxford English Dictionary also includes the word.
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Google, however, is apparently unimpressed. Shrugging off the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity, it is worried that common usage risks diluting its trademark’s value, estimated this year at some $12.4 billion by Interbrand, the consultancy.
This week Google fired off a series of legal letters to the media. Explaining the move, Rose Hagan, Google’s senior trademark counsel, told Times Online: “Protecting our trademark is important to us, so we want to be sure that when people talk about ‘Googling’ they mean searching on Google and not on any other search engine.”
But the decision has bemused the blogosphere.
Boingboing.net, the world’s most popular technology blog, said: “Bloggers have been making fun of the examples Google’s lawyers deem acceptable. They included: ‘Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party. Inappropriate: I googled that hottie’.”
Kalle Alm, another blogger, noted that the term has also found its way into Japanese dictionaries. Boingboing countered that by referencing the French “googler”, the Italian “googolare” and the Spanish “googlar”.
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Google’s move mirrors others in the technology sector. Apple, the iPod maker, is reported to have sent letters to at least two companies that have launched products or services containing “pod” in their name.
Apple was unavailable for comment immediately.
Other companies such as Hoover and Xerox have asked that their names only be used to refer to their products.
But bloggers - most of them avid users of Google’s search engine - have accused the internet giant of forgetting its motto - “do no evil” - and of taking itself too seriously.
The AgonyFunkle blog said: “We profusely apologise for misusing your brand name oh Great One. We also apologise for assuming you were a maverick company that didn’t care for such silly things.”
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Meanwhile, Google itself has faced complaints over its name.
In 2004, the family of Edward Kasner, the US mathematician who invented the word “googol” (the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros) said they were considering legal action against the company for a share of its multi-billion-dollar stock market float.