Peter Dockrill03 August 2006, 5:41 AM
Merriam-Webster probably didn't know the ructions in the cosmic field it would cause by adding the term google to the upcoming 11th edition of its dictionary. Commentators went into a spin, pointing to Google's own warnings that the use of its name as a common verb would be a major risk to its business. Who would have thought Google's popularity could be its ultimate downfall?
Last month's announcement by Merriam-Webster that it would include the term "google" as a verb in the upcoming 11th edition of its Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary rocked the web, sending commentators into overdrive over whether Google -- the company this time -- will we able to protect its most significant piece of intellectual property: its name.
That events have progressed this far is illustrative of many things; not only the contemporary significance of Google, but also the speed with which ideas and cultural artefacts are communicated and distributed in the online world.
In fact, the term "Google" had already been included as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary, but the reason Merriam-Webster's announcement is significant is that the term it is preparing to include is "google" with a lower-case "g" (as a transitive verb).
Merriam-Webster's definition reads "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web" and the etymology it provides is "Google, trademark for a search engine".
From a certain perspective, the fact that "google" is to be included in a published dictionary is a significant achievement. Wikipedia may offer one contemporary (and fairly loose) standard of relevance, but you really know you've arrived when the cultural lexicon has adopted you to the extent that you're "dictionary worthy". After all, the English language is pretty old school.
What is particularly remarkable, as latimes.com observed, is the speed with which the term and brand have been dispersed.
However, the inclusion of "google" in a dictionary is particularly threatening to the company in legal terms as it threatens Google with losing exclusive control over its intellectual property hallmarks.
The company's annual report for last year alluded to this concern: " We also face risks [in addition to patent issues] 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."
Well, this had to happen one day. People have been using the term "google" as a verb in their regular speech for some time now. Characters in TV and movies do it, reflecting and reinforcing our everyday convention. People casually use the term as if it represents a basic service or function within society.
Just as one might say, "look it up, it's in the dictionary" -- without specifying any particular dictionary -- one could say "look it up on the internet" or "look it up on Google". It seems that the meaning, in many people's minds, is essentially the same.
Whilst then not quite losing its status as a proper noun, as Google became the default mainstream search engine of the masses (and a free tool at that), its use for being the means to search for information on the internet became almost an afterthought. From here it was just a small step to contracting the expression to a one-word verb: "google it".
The irony here is plain. Google as a company would very much want to dominate the search engine field to the exclusion of all others -- but for the term "google" to become a generic word meaning "search"? That's no good.
Whether Google does indeed lose any significant trademark protections over its name and brands will remain to be seen. Certainly, other companies have come up against this problem in the past and survived.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see what becomes of this situation and whether any other internet brands which have enjoyed explosive and accelerated use, popularity and growth (eg. Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace) will experience similar issues.