Verbing Weirds Google

MoNickels writes "Back in January, the American Dialect Society voted the neologism "to google" as the most useful word of 2002. Now bring on the lawyers! Google's have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of the famous Word Spy site, demanding he remove google as a verb from his lexicon, or else. Frank Abate, an American editor for the Oxford English Dictionary, points out, however, that you can't claim proprietary rights to a verb." Update: 02/26 03:19 GMT by T : MoNickels writes with an update: "Frank Abate is not an editor of the OED, but he is a former editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, both published by Oxford University Press." Thanks for the amendment!

Comments

ok, so he removes it from his lexicon so what?

[garcia]

is Google going to stop everyone else from using the seemingly more popular "go google for it"? Wouldn't Google want this sort of publicity? Become a common-place-word?

Does it hurt Kleenex that people refer to facial tissue as Kleenexes? Yeah, I didn't think so.

On ER...

[$$$$$exyGal]

I heard them use the term 'googling' on ER the other night. That term is definitely part of the "American" language, and noone can do anything about it ;-).

--sex

Re:never work

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is it has to do with trademark law. In order to keep your mark, you must vigorously defend it and prevent it from becoming common vernacular.

Kleenex and Xerox did not defend their marks, which is why people refer to any facial tissue as Kleenex. Same goes with "Xerox" copies.

Re:never work

[karlowfwb]

Google doesn't have much of an option. If they do not follow up on this voratiously, they will most likely loose the copyright on their name. They may be making themselves look like asses, but that is the price that have to pay.

Precedents.

[Spudley]

Google are far from the first, and will certainly not be the last company to have their name turned into a common word.

Hoover, Frigidaire, Kleenex, Xerox, and many others have "suffered" the same fate.

Most of them have tried to fight it, and most of them have failed.

But having your name used as a common word can have it's advantages - it is caused by brand awareness, and generally cements it in place. It doesn't garuantee that you'll have complete market share forever, but it can certainly help.

It should also be pointed out that "to google" was already an (informal) verb, meaning "to look" (where did you think the name came from?). Google may quibble over semantics, in that it's mostly being used in a different context these days, but they certainly can't remove it from from the dictionary.

Re:never work - But it must

[Lil'wombat]

The issue is trademark law. If you allow your trade marked name to come into common usage you lose your trade mark protection. Thats why it is called Kleenex(tm) facial tissue, or Lycra(tm) spandex or Spam(tm) luncheon meat.

If google the verb gets into the dictionary, then someone else could come along and start a MyGoogle.com search site and Google would not be able to shut them down.

Their lawsuit won't stop you or I from using google as a verb, but it will stop journalists from propogating the use. Just like everyone says they are going to make a xerox, you wont find that usage in an newspaper article (not without a nasty letter from the Xerox Corporation!!)

We spend a lot of time complaining about Copyright law on slashdot, but Trademark Law is just as screwy. I could Trademark JohnG for my online internet comment generating company and go around and get the accounts of JohnG's everywhere deactivated on every internet disucussion forum.