7/14/2006

You can google, but don't Google!

It's official, you can now google someone. Just don't say that you're going to Google them.

According to Merriam-Webster Online, google is now recognized as a verb. To some of us this isn't new, because using google as a verb has been going on for years.

goo·gle. transitive verb. 'gü-g&l 1. to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web. Inflected Form(s): goo·gled; goo·gling. Usage: often capitalized. Etymology: Google, trademark for a search engine.

Example 1: "I need to google for a map of Florida."
Example 2: "Wanda was googling for a new boyfriend yesterday."

Incorrect usage: "You can Google, but you can't Yahoo! to find that!"

Just remember, Google™ is a proper name, a trademark identifying Google Inc.’s search technology and services, while google is proper if it's used as a verb.

By the way, there's a sample online of the nearly 100 new words and senses from the 2006 copyright version of the best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition which should be available in most bookstores this fall.

Sometimes we google to do a little lexpionage, as we search out new words and phrases. And then there's the massage that warns you of what will happen if you google yourself. If you take your googling experience serious enough to want to know what's hot, then you can always visit the Google Zeitgeist site, where you can "search patterns, trends, and surprises." And if you want to get the story behind some of the top queries in a video fashion, visit Google Current.

You can have fun while googling:

The Man She Forgot to Google!  This great design is available on a shirt and other items from T-ShirtHumor.com

What does "Google" mean - officially?

The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. A googol refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe -- not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects our mission to organize the world's immense (and seemingly infinite) amount of information and make it universally accessible and useful.

More interesting information about Google, Inc. can be found here, or you could just google it.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dont Google it, Targ8 it. Targ8.com combines the power of google, with extra custom search engine directories and hot links directly to other search engines and searchable websites. Great!