Now when people search for something on the web, most people use the Google search engine, so much so that they don’t just search for something, they Google something.
‘I needed to find something out so I Googled it,’ someone might say.
In fact when I spoke to mum recently she said, ‘Does it cost anything to Google?’ I had a bit of an inward chuckle at the obviousness of her not being on or having used the internet before and replied, ‘Google is free to use, but you need a computer and you need to be on the internet, and that can cost.’
She just wanted to search for some information and had obviously heard the term Google in relation to web searching being bandied about.
Over on the official Google blog they’ve posted about Google and its trademark and how their lawyers don’t like the word Google being replaced with internet searching,
"Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say:
Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine.
If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to
"search" on Yahoo or any other search engine."
I know I say that I’ve Googled something, but I have actually used Google to do it, not another search engine.
