Thursday, January 06, 2005

Corporate Linguistics in the UK

The BBC reports that Google is not too happy with the popularity of their name across the pond, whereas "back here," control is a lost cause:

Paul McFedries, who runs the lexicography site Word Spy, received a stiffly worded letter from the firm after he added "google" to his online lexicon.

The company asked him to delete the definition or revise it to take account of the "trade mark status of Google". He opted for the latter.

Google's problem is one of the paradoxes of having a runaway successful brand. The bigger it gets, the more it becomes part of everyday English language and less a brand in its own right.

Just as we talk about "hoovering" instead of vacuuming, people have started to say "google" to mean search. The word has become an eponym.

No comments: