(Please) stop using our name as a verb! You have to feel for Michael Krantz, the writer on Google’s official blog who was charged with explaining the company’s compulsion to fight the use of the word Google as a verb. It’s a losing battle, obviously, since “Googling” has long since become part of the vernacular. But anyone with a passing knowledge of trademark law knows Google has to defend its trademark or go the way of Xerox and Kleenex into what the legal eagles call “genericity.” But how does a corporation with a market cap of $146 billion tell people, in a nice way, not to devalue its brand? Krantz’s effort is an awkward read—lots of forced jokes, tough stabs at humility and not-so-subtle “the lawyers are making us do this” signals. It’s hard to keep up the little-guy act when you’re not. —Posted by Brian Morrissey

October 27, 2006 in Morrissey | Permalink

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"It's hard to keep up the little guy act when you're not."

Well said.

The whole "we're a cool young company on the cutting edge, with a dynamic corporate culture" stinks of the dotcomedy of yesteryear. I'll bet they have mandatory foosball tournaments.

I'd like to see Google become a cussword.

"This is all googled up."

"You worthless piece of google."

Posted by: Times New Romans | Oct 27, 2006 3:20:51 PM

When I was adfreaking some adpulps the other adrant, I copyrantered that adlanding could get you schencked.

Posted by: Bob | Oct 27, 2006 3:55:47 PM

Don't forget poor aspirin. With that sad lower-case "a."

Posted by: CorruptedJournalist | Oct 27, 2006 4:26:06 PM

A funny response from Ask.com:

http://blog.ask.com/2006/10/you_do_andor_ma.html

Posted by: Lynn | Oct 27, 2006 6:56:33 PM

I think Mr. Michael Krantz did a pretty good job, given it's a tough sort of blog post to write. Furthermore, who said that grown up companies have to act grown up? I don't think Google tries to sell this dot-com image because it somehow makes their brand more valuable, I think that the aboon folks sincerely want their company to retain that type of attitude.

Whether that's possible when you're a multinational organization is debatable, but what I hear from the Googleplex sounds a whole lot better than, say, the exposés about Redmond.

Posted by: Noah Dietterich | Oct 27, 2006 8:03:43 PM

Okay Noah, you can now remove your nose from Mr. Krantz's anus.

Posted by: StickASockInIt | Oct 28, 2006 9:52:34 AM

Just for that, I changed my default search engine from google to ask. We'll see how that goes.

Posted by: stevek | Oct 30, 2006 11:25:41 AM

Glad that is settled. That foolish idea has been gaaagled.
http://gaaagle.com/blog

Posted by: owen | Nov 1, 2006 8:53:37 AM

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