The Independent Online reports that Google has fired off a series of legal letters to the media, asking them not to use the name of the company as a verb. This despite the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's include the search engine as a verb - e.g. "to google."
Beyond the sheer legal issues, one of the places where this of course gets fuzzy is in the definition of "media." How in the world do they expect to enforce this when every blogger under the sun uses the phrase on his/her own sites? It's part of the pop culture.
This has to go down as one of the worst PR moves in history. They're getting all this free publicity and it's right on message. Google sounds like a big arrogant company that has forgotten its roots. That's too bad. (Footnote: Microsoft, an Edelman client, is a Google competitor.)
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