Google is worried of being too popular
Why google is worried about being popular? It is because of trademark. Actually, I’ve came across this Google’s quotation on The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs.
“We also face risks associated with our trademarks. For example, there is a risk that the word ‘Google’ could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with the word ’search’ If this happens, we could lose protection for this trademark, which could result in other people using the word ‘Google’ to refer to their own products, thus diminishing our brand.”
I don’t know much about trademark. But for me, such popularity is great. The word google is now listed on dictionary as verb, which means to search for information on the Internet, but not only with Google Search Engine.
Main Entry: google1
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Etymology: trademark Google
Usage: googling nMain Entry: google2
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine
Example: We googled to find the definition of the new word.
Etymology: trademark Google
Usage: googling n
By the way, there are many other cases, where the brand is so popular that people use it as verb. A quick example is Xerox. Xerox is a brand of photocopying machine and as verb, it means to make a photocopy.
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Make A Comment: ( 4 so far )
4 Responses to “Google is worried of being too popular”
I wonder if I can trademark “ah ok lah”, which is a common Malaysian remark. It still doesn’t have a dictionary meaning. Hmmm.
Adam
July 6th, 2006
The true meaning of the word ‘google’ is a number equal to 10^100 (that is a number with 100 zeroes).
It’s something like a hundred (2 zeroes), a thousand (3 zeroes), a million (six zeroes)… only, it’s a google (a hundred zeroes).
Unfortunately, this meaning has been lost to most people. They see google as a search engine and nothing more.
Jon
July 6th, 2006
Jon,
The word for 10^100 is actually googol. For 10^googol, it’s called googolplex. Check Wikipedia. 
korokmu
July 6th, 2006
yeah, and there’s Pampers. We would normally call diapers, but somehow people (esp Malaysians) refer pampers to diapers.
And FedEx. Often this name is considered as a verb to indicate ’send’.
“I have ‘fedexed’ your mail. It will arrive probably tomorrow”
abe
July 9th, 2006
