It’s a symptom of a problem, not the source of it. It’s great that it happens, because if it happens enough, Google might lose the trademark
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
30 points (85.7% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
801 readers
30 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It’s not the first time — plenty of people still use “Xerox” to mean copy even if they obviously are not referring to a machine made by Xerox
In Russian, it's a generally used term "xerox it" ("отксерить") for when you need to copy some papers
In Poland it's called "ksero" all the time even though most people never even heard about the Xerox company
That’s really interesting actually, funny how languages evolve that way
It's normal that brand names become widely used synonyms for basic activities. Just one example would be this one: In german ppl call adhesive tape "tixo" like the company producing it. So before we abolish capitalism this problem will keep on existing.
I am trying not to use those words but even though i'm using DuckDuckgGo, "Googling smth" is just so widely used, it's too hard to stop using it and it'd also be kinda useless to do so, like what am I going to achieve there?
In german ppl call adhesive tape "tixo" like the company producing it.
Do you mean Tesa? I've never heard Tixo but maybe we live in different parts of Germany?
Oh, I live in Austria! Maybe should have specified that, lol. I rly thought it would be the same for ppl in germany as well. At least here we say Tixo tho, I think I heard it on german telivision 'Tesaband'? Ig it makes sense that there's regional differences for this stuff.
"Tesafilm" is more common or just Tesa. I would have assumed it to be the same in Austria but I guess we both learned something today
Think of it this way: someone asks you a question and you think about it for a while, you can say “Ah Fuck it, Duck Duck it” instead of “Let’s google it”
Doesn't roll off the tongue as much, does it xD tho my problem is, u just replace one company with another. I mean obv one is decisively bigger than the other, so I do get the appeal. But it's still a company. So profit will still be higher on the list than any morals.
Fun fact: when the verb "to google" came into existence, Google was against it because they weren't yet the monopoly they are now and they feared that using the term for other search engines would undermine their importance.
I use the term even though I use other search engines
Imo it’s a reflex at this point. Like some people say “can you pass me a Kleenex” instead of “can you pass me a tissue” and like 99% of people call it a Taser instead of… idek what it’s called. Even Escalator and Kerosene were once Trademarked, but with enough use by normal people, they can lose it to a process called genericization (the process of becoming Generic). Hopefully Google™️ loses its trademark because they’re pretty fucked up
Its problematic for google.
Lol is ur username based on The Mighty Boosh🤣I used to love that show it’s been a while
It is, just as so many brand names have become the colloquial term for a thing.
Everyone I know says "Kleenex" not "facial tissue."
I say tissue
You have a point, but sometimes you gotta choose your battles.
In fact it can hurt Google if their trademark term develops a generic or nonspecific meaning. So dating "Google it" and then linking to ddg might be the best thing you could do.
just yesterday i was watching a Danganronpa (someone posts a lot about it around here so i got curious lol) playthrough in youtube and one of the characters in the game said "just google it". This is a game released like 15 years ago.
It kind of sucks because there are many other search engines and google has been getting worse and worse. Maybe it was always like this but nowadays i feel like every website in the front page of google is straight up written by an AI.
You should try this privacy-respecting meta-search engine 😊. This is the one that I use. It is an open-source project that doesn't have any ads and works only on donations. Also, it doesn't log IP addresses or searchers.
Aha o.O Would u prefer it over DuckDuckGo? Any pros and cons? Would be hella interested in that
I just don’t trust for profit companies to keep their word about privacy when the opportunity to sell your data is there.
I can totally get behind that. Imma check it out immediately. Thx
Oh wait - what instance do u recommend using? It's always the same with these xD I never know which one to choose.
nah, this is great. it's the reverse of the enclosure of the commons.
For a couple of years I tried to say "look it up" instead, but now I've accepted my defeat and I say "that's interesting, let me google it" as I type the query into DDG
literally though. I think if Google ever dies, this will be one of those words that just sucks around.