Google (TM, ©, all rights reserved) fights the dreaded ‘verb effect’

August 12, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

Ninety-nine percent of us call plastic flying discs Frisbees, but guess what, some of them aren’t. Wham-O makes Frisbees. Other plastic flying discs are just that.

Products can become too successful. When this happens, their names often become generic stand-ins for all similar products.

It can happen to services too. Consider the Google search engine. “Google” is now in the dictionary. People use it as verb. This upsets the owners of Google. If a young woman meets a man at a bar and writes about it on a blog, the owners of Google do not want her to write, “I googled that guy I met last night.” They want her to say something like, “I used the Google search engine to gather information about that guy I met last night.”

I’m serious. Recently, Google’s lawyers sent a letter about this to The Washington Post. It included examples of appropriate and inappropriate usages. Here are two:

Appropriate: He ego-surfs on the Google search engine to see if he’s listed in the results.
Inappropriate: He googles himself.

Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.
Inappropriate: I googled that hottie.

Yes, Google actually used the word “hottie.”

The Post reporter noted that the letter was hand-addressed. My guess is the company has hired people to do nothing but examine publications, blogs and websites and send out threat letters every time an “inappropriate” usage appears.

Look, I will grant that Google deserves to be capitalized. After all, not every tissue you use for blowing your nose is a Kleenex. But if the company really expects people to say things like, “I ran a Google search for information on Genghis Kahn to help me with my term paper” they are dreaming.

Google’s owners should be happy their product is so successful. Many people I know never use any other search engine. After all, when was the last time you heard someone say, “I webcrawlered that guy I met in the bar last night”?

This is a losing battle. Think of “Kleenex,” which you mention, “Xerox,” even “Coke” (the drink, not the powder). Once a usage like this enters the language, it’s a done deal. One wonders why they object to this.

  • You’re right that the company can’t expect people to say things like “I ran a Google search for information on Genghis Kahn to help me with my term paper.” What you may not realize, however, is that they have to send letters like this, regardless of what they really expect others to do.

    Why? Because if they don’t, then they will lose control of the Google name as a brand. If they do not engage in a serious effort to preserve the name Google as their product label, then it will be transferred into the public domain as a generic name for searching. Then anyone can use “google” to describe their search engine. You could create “The Carpetbagger Google Search” and not be sued.

    If a magazine like Newsweek uses kleenex instead of Kleenex, they’ll get letters. If they use crock pot instead of Crock Pot, they’ll get letters. There are lots of products which have become so successful that the product names start to be used as the generic names, but if companies don’t show that they are fighting this, then the courts will eventually rule that they *are* generic names – generic names which *any* company can use.

    So, yes, it seems dumb from a practical standpoint but it’s absolutely necessary from a legal and marketing standpoint.

  • Addendum: they don’t have to be successful in preventing people from using their brand name as a generic name – they just have to be able to show in court that they are sending letters and do other basic things in order to fight it. So long as they can say “look, we’re trying to preserve this and we haven’t given up,” the courts will typically rule in their favor when they sue someone for trademark infringement.

  • As I don’t read them anymore, I don’t know for sure, but Xerox used to regularly run trade ads telling people not to say Xerox when they meant photocopy. Coca Cola ran similar ads as far back as WWII. It is a matter of protecting the trademark. Should the time ever come when Google must defend its trademark in court, they can produce the a paper trail proving the actively attempted to keep the name out of public domain. It’s a standard CYA legal move.

  • Billy deBeck’s 1919 comic strip about a couple of hillbillies, aptly entitled “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith,” predates the Google search engine by decades. It also happens to be protected under trademark and copyright law. Perhaps the “search-engine” folks might want to back away from this effort to intimidate on an indiscriminate basis, as one who lives in a glass mansion should not throw stones at the glass shanty across the road….

  • Er, Morbo, I think you meant to say the more appropriate: “I ran a Webcrawler search on that guy I met in the bar last night”

  • Him: I google the girl I ogled last night.
    Her: I yahooed the yahoo who kept staring at me all night.

  • Him: I googled the girl I ogled last night.
    Her: I yahooed the yahoo who kept staring at me all night.
    That’s it I’m enrolling in typing class as soon as possible.

  • Since Barney Google and Google search engine refer to two unrelated products, then the search engine company has not infringed on the comic strip.

  • Slow news week, Morbo?

    Corporations have to send out letters like this to avoid dilution of their intellectual property rights. It’s not necessarily that they expect people to refrain from casual usage of the product name, and in fact the practice is good for business, but if they didn’t aggressively defend against such practices they would lose legal protection of the trade name (in which case other companies could start marketing “Frisbees” or “Xerox” machines.)

    This sort of thing happens all the time and is hardly post-worthy.

  • ***Barney Google, with the goo-goo-goo-ga-ly eyes. Barney Google, thought his horse could win the prize.***
    —from the song, “Barney Google.”

    Those “goo-goo-googa-ly eyes” were the result of the character’s endless search through the very small print of various horserace-bills. ever read those things, Fallenwoman? Ever read some of the vintage printbills that were printed in the newspapers during the post war (WW-1) era? It’s rather likely that “Barney” was the prototype for the concept of a search-engine scanning through copious quantities of data—just like a track-bum like Barney scanned through the betting sheets.

    Tell ya what—we’ll play “the conservative’s favorite game” on this one. Make the effort to “prove” that they didn’t get the idea for their name from the cartoon character….

  • Gee, Steve, I’ve really made your day. I have no doubt that the name of the search engine was based on Barney Google’s eyes. (Although I’m an old woman, I’ve never read the Barney Google comic strip.) However, since search engines and comic strips are two unrelated products, there is no liklihood of confusion as to their manufacturers. If another search engine company called their product Goggle, then they would be infringing on the Google trademark.

  • Hey, let’s stamp out cocaine by getting Coca-Cola (TM) to send threatening letters to your neighborhood coke-dealer!

    But seriously, you say: “My guess is the company has hired people to do nothing but examine publications, blogs and websites and send out threat letters every time an “inappropriate” usage appears.”

    Wouldn’t it have been easier just to Google “Googled”?

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