August 14, 2006 Comments
I missed a great article last week while I was buzzing around Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. It's from the Seattle Times and it discusses Google's annoyance with media outlets that continue to use the word "google" as a verb meaning "to search." It was just last month that the word "google" was included in the latest version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, but the folks at Google the company are not dancing with joy. In fact, they're busy sending out letters from their trademark lawyer to reporters and media outlets.
Turns out that the Washington Post, and a variety of other media outlets, got a letter last week explaining that Google's trademark lawyers consider the "common" usage of the word "google" to be "genericide." It went on to give examples of how the word Google could be acceptably used in news articles.
From the article:
Google goes the extra mile and provides a helpful list of appropriate and inappropriate uses of its name.
To show how hip and down with the kids Google is, the company gets a little wacky with its examples. Here's one:
"Appropriate: He ego-surfs on the Google search engine to see if he's listed in the results.
"Inappropriate: He googles himself."
But this is perhaps the best: "Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.
"Inappropriate: I googled that hottie."
It's a matter of debate whether it's appropriate or inappropriate for a market-leading company worth $113 billion to use the word "hottie" in official correspondence.
What is beyond debate is the fact that Google's trademark complaint arrived via a hand-addressed letter in the actual mail.
With that in mind, I scoff at the lowly newspaper companies that are just now getting their warning letter from Google. Why Google's legal department emailed me more than a year ago because they were upset that I had used the term "google" as a verb in one of my own articles. Never mind the fact that in doing so, I was actually quoting an article from another site. ;)
I wonder how long it will be before Barry Diller starts sending me legal notices for all the times that I use "ask" as a verb in my articles and blog posts...
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