The first recorded usage ofgoogle was as agerund, on July 8, 1998, byGoogle co-founderLarry Page himself, who wrote on a mailing list: "Have fun and keep googling!".[7] Its earliest known use as an explicitly transitive verb on American television was in the "Help" episode ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer (October 15, 2002), whenWillow askedBuffy, "Have you googled her yet?".[8]
To preventgenericizing and potential loss of itstrademark, Google has discouraged use of the word as a verb, particularly when used as a synonym for general web searching. On February 23, 2003,[9] Google sent acease and desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of Word Spy, a website that tracksneologisms.[10] In an article inThe Washington Post, Frank Ahrens discussed the letter he received from a Google lawyer that demonstrated "appropriate" and "inappropriate" ways to use the verb "google".[11]
It was reported that, in response to this concern,lexicographers for theMerriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary turned to lowercase the actual entry of the word,google. They maintained the capitalization of the search engine in their definition, "to use theGoogle search engine to seek online information" (a concern which did not deter the Oxford editors from preserving the history of both "cases").[12] On October 25, 2006, Google sent a request to the public requesting that "You should please only use 'Google' when you're actually referring to Google Inc. and our services."[13]
Ungoogleable means it is something that cannot be "googled" – i.e. it cannot be easily found using a web search engine, especially Google.[14] If a word or phrase isungoogleable, it means it cannot be googled. In 2013, theSwedish Language Council attempted to include theSwedish version of the word (Ogooglebar [sv]) in its list of new words, but Google objected to the definition not being specifically related to Google, and the council was forced to remove it immediately to avoid a legal confrontation with Google.[15][16]
^McFedries, Paul (February 23, 2003)."Google trademark concerns". American Dialect Society Mailing List. Archived fromthe original on July 3, 2007. RetrievedAugust 11, 2007.
