Google – the verb wars

Linguistic purists need not fear – Google’s lawyers are on the case:

Search engine giant Google, known for its mantra “don’t be evil”, has fired off a series of legal letters to media organisations, warning them against using its name as a verb.

[...] 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.”

In the immortal words of someone whose name I can’t remember – they’re shoutycrackers.  I’d google them, but I might get in trouble.

One comment

  1. This is a bit daft. I thought it was a major success for a company name to also be used to describe the category (Hoover, for example), so why should Google be complaining its name has been adopted in a similar way?