The first recorded usage of google was as a
gerund, on July 8, 1998, by
Google co-founder
Larry 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 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (October 15, 2002), when
Willow asked
Buffy, "Have you googled her yet?".[8]
To prevent
genericizing and potential loss of its
trademark, 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 a
cease and desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of Word Spy, a website that tracks
neologisms.[10] In an article in The 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 the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary lowercased the actual entry for the word, google, while maintaining the capitalization of the search engine in their definition, "to use the
Google 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 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 is ungoogleable, it means it cannot be googled. In 2013, the
Swedish Language Council attempted to include the
Swedish 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 briefly remove it to avoid a legal confrontation with Google.[15][16]
^McFedries, Paul (February 23, 2003).
"Google trademark concerns". American Dialect Society Mailing List. Archived from
the original on July 3, 2007. Retrieved August 11, 2007.