Google (verb)

To google, or googling, is an English verb denoting the act of using the Google search engine to obtain information about a person, place, or thing on the internet.^[1] The term functions primarily as a transitive verb, as in "to google a name," though it can also appear intransitively in contexts like "just google it."^[2] This usage emerged in the late 1990s alongside the rapid rise of the Google search engine, which was launched in 1998 by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.^[3] The verb's adoption reflects the dominance of Google in online searching, with the earliest documented use attributed to Larry Page in 1998, describing the process of querying the engine.^[2] By the early 2000s, "google" had permeated popular culture and language, appearing in media, literature, and casual speech as a shorthand for internet research.^[4] In 2002, the American Dialect Society recognized it as the "most useful word of the year," highlighting its utility in denoting quick, targeted information retrieval.^[3] Formal dictionary inclusion followed, with the Oxford English Dictionary adding the verb entry on June 15, 2006, defining it as "to use the Google search engine to carry out a search for information on the Internet."^[2] Despite its ubiquity, the verb form has raised trademark concerns for Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, due to the risk of genericide—where a brand name becomes a generic term for the activity it describes, potentially forfeiting legal protection.^[5] In 2013, Google issued guidelines urging users to specify "Google search" rather than the standalone verb to preserve its distinctiveness.^[5] However, U.S. courts have ruled in Google's favor, as in the 2017 Ninth Circuit decision in Elliott v. Google, which held that widespread verb usage alone does not render the mark generic, provided consumers still associate it primarily with the Google brand.^[6] This legal stance underscores the tension between linguistic evolution and intellectual property rights in the digital age.

Definition and Usage

Primary Meaning

The verb google means to search for information on the World Wide Web using the Google search engine, typically by entering keywords to retrieve relevant results about a person, topic, or item.^[7] This action is defined as obtaining information specifically through Google's platform, distinguishing it from generic web searching.^[1] Unlike the noun form, which refers to the Google company or its search engine as a tool, the verb google highlights the performative process of conducting the search itself.^[8] The first recorded use of google as a verb occurred in July 1998, when Google co-founder Larry Page employed it in a message on a Stanford University mailing list, signing off with "Have fun and keep googling!"^[3] The term is commonly applied in informal contexts to denote a quick or casual lookup, as in the phrase "Let me google that" during everyday conversations.^[3] In more formal writing, however, it is often avoided in favor of neutral alternatives like "search the internet," reflecting its origins as a brand-specific neologism.^[9]

Grammatical Forms and Examples

As a verb, "google" follows the standard conjugation pattern for regular English verbs in the indicative mood. The base form is "google," the third-person singular present tense is "googles," the past tense and past participle is "googled," and the present participle is "googling." Merriam-Webster Dictionary lists both lowercase and capitalized variants (e.g., "Google," "Googles," "Googled," "Googling") as acceptable, reflecting its origins as a brand name while acknowledging its generic usage.^[1] The verb is primarily transitive, requiring a direct object to complete its meaning, as in "She googled the restaurant's address" to indicate searching for specific information using an online search engine. It can also function intransitively without an object, implying the act of searching generally, as in "He paused the conversation to google." This dual usage aligns with its definition: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (someone or something) on the Internet," where the parenthetical allows for object omission in context.^[1][3] Common idiomatic expressions incorporate "google" to convey casual or cautionary searching. For instance, "a quick google" refers to a brief, informal search for verification, as in "A quick google confirmed the event's date." Similarly, "don't google it" warns against looking up potentially disturbing or spoiler-heavy content, such as "The movie's twist is infamous—don't google it if you haven't seen it." Another everyday example is "let me google that," used when someone intends to fact-check a claim promptly, like "Is that true? Let me google that right now." These phrases highlight the verb's integration into conversational English for efficient information retrieval.^[10][11] Regarding capitalization, major style guides recommend lowercase "g" when "google" functions as a generic verb to distinguish it from the proper noun brand name, avoiding trademark implications in non-promotional writing. The Associated Press Stylebook advises capitalizing it as "Google" to retain its branded association, while the Chicago Manual of Style permits both but notes lowercase variants as standard per dictionary entries like Merriam-Webster's. In practice, lowercase prevails in informal and dictionary contexts to reflect verbification.^[12][13]

Etymology and Origin

Coinage of the Term

The term "googol," from which the company name Google is derived, refers to the mathematical constant $10^{100}$10100, or 1 followed by 100 zeros.^[14] It was coined in 1938 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, during a family discussion on naming extremely large numbers.^[15] Kasner popularized the term in his 1940 book Mathematics and the Imagination, co-authored with James R. Newman, where he explained its creation as a playful yet illustrative way to denote vast quantities, reflecting the boundless scale of mathematical concepts.^[14] Google Inc. was founded on September 4, 1998, by Stanford University PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who initially developed their search engine project under the name BackRub in 1996.^[16] Seeking a new name to capture the mission of organizing immense amounts of global information, Page and Brin drew inspiration from "googol" to symbolize the enormous scale of data they aimed to index.^[17] The spelling "Google" emerged from an accidental misspelling of "googol" when a friend, Sean Anderson, typed "google.com" into a domain registrar to check availability; finding it open, the founders registered it and adopted the variant, appreciating its phonetic similarity and memorability.^[18] Hints of "google" functioning as a verb appeared internally at the company shortly after its inception. On July 8, 1998—just two months before the official founding—Page used it as a gerund in an email to a Stanford student mailing list, writing, "Have fun and keep 'googling'!" to encourage exploration via their emerging search tool.^[3] This early, informal usage reflected the founders' vision of the tool as an active process for information retrieval, though it remained confined to internal communications through the late 1990s and did not enter public lexicon until the early 2000s.^[3]

Early Adoption as a Verb

The earliest documented transition of "google" from a proper noun to a verb occurred in 1998 within Google's internal communications. On July 8, 1998, co-founder Larry Page used it as a gerund in an email on the Google Friends mailing list, signing off with "Have fun and keep googling!" to announce new search features.^[19] This internal usage soon appeared publicly in online discussions; the Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1999 Usenet post in the alt.fan.british-accent newsgroup asking, "Has anyone Googled?" and a 2000 post in alt.sysadmin.recovery where a user noted, "I’ve googled some keywords..."^[20] The term's adoption accelerated among Silicon Valley's tech community and early internet forums, where Google's innovative PageRank algorithm made it the preferred tool for web searches. Users in these circles, including developers and enthusiasts, began employing "to google" as shorthand for conducting precise online queries, embedding the verb in the lexicon of the burgeoning digital ecosystem by the early 2000s.^[21] This grassroots spread reflected the search engine's dominance in a region dense with tech innovators. Media coverage further propelled the verb into broader awareness starting in 2001. A March 11, 2001, New York Times article described an online dating mishap with the phrase "googled her," marking one of the earliest mainstream journalistic uses.^[22] Around the same time, the New York Observer headline "Google Him!" in January 2001 exemplified its casual integration into popular discourse.^[19] Google initially viewed this verbification with trademark apprehension, concerned it could lead to genericization like "xerox" for photocopying. In 2006, the company issued legal warnings to media outlets against using "google" as a verb, emphasizing brand protection despite its "Don't be evil" motto, to prevent dilution of its intellectual property.

Historical Development

Rise in Popularity (2000s)

During the 2000s, Google's dominance in the search engine market surged, which paralleled the growing use of "google" as a verb in English. In July 2009 (as reported in August), Google Sites accounted for 67.5 percent of the global search market, conducting 76.7 billion searches out of a total exceeding 113 billion and outpacing competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft.^[23] This market leadership, achieved through innovations like the PageRank algorithm and improved relevance in results, made "googling" synonymous with online information retrieval, as users increasingly referred to searching via Google specifically rather than generically.^[16] Key cultural milestones in 2004 further embedded Google into daily life, accelerating the verb's adoption. The launch of Gmail on April 1, 2004, introduced 1 GB of free storage—far exceeding competitors—and integrated seamless search within email, encouraging users to "google" their inboxes.^[24] Later that year, Google's initial public offering on August 19 raised $1.9 billion at $85 per share, valuing the company at $23 billion and elevating its visibility as a household name.^[25] These developments transformed Google from a technical tool into an everyday utility, fostering verbal integration in conversations about research and discovery. Linguistic data from the decade illustrates this rise quantitatively. The Google Books Ngram Viewer reveals a sharp increase in phrases like "to google" and "google it" in published English texts, with frequencies climbing from near-zero in 2000 to measurable peaks by 2010, reflecting broader cultural penetration. Similarly, the Oxford English Corpus, monitoring real-world usage, captured early examples such as "I googled the symptoms" in journalistic and casual writing by mid-decade, signaling informal entrenchment.^[26] In media and pop culture, "google" as a verb gained traction through notable appearances. A pivotal moment occurred in the October 15, 2002, episode of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the phrase "Why don't we google him?" marked one of the first on-screen uses, popularizing it among audiences. This was echoed in books and other shows throughout the decade, solidifying its role in narratives about quick information access.

Integration into Dictionaries

The formal recognition of "google" as a verb began with its inclusion in major English-language dictionaries in the mid-2000s. Merriam-Webster added it to its Collegiate Dictionary in 2006, defining it as a transitive verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (someone or something) on the Internet."^[27] Similarly, the Oxford English Dictionary incorporated "google" as a verb in its June 2006 update, retaining the capitalization and citing its earliest evidence from 1998, with the primary sense being "to use the Google search engine to find information on the internet."^[2] These entries marked an official validation of the term's widespread informal use, driven by the search engine's dominance since the early 2000s.^[3] The verb form quickly spread to dictionaries in other languages, reflecting global adoption. In German, the Duden dictionary included "googeln" in its 2004 edition as the infinitive form meaning "to search using a search engine," adapting the English term to fit German conjugation patterns.^[28] For French, the Petit Larousse illustré added "googliser" in its 2014 edition, defined as a verb denoting the act of searching for information online, often specifically via Google, amid efforts to incorporate anglicisms into the lexicon.^[29] This integration sparked debates on genericization, where a brand name risks becoming a generic term for the product category, similar to "xerox" for photocopying or "hoover" for vacuuming in British English. Google has actively resisted full genericization to protect its trademark, issuing style guides that discourage using "google" as a generic verb; for instance, a 2006 company blog post urged writers to say "search with Google" instead of "google it" unless referring specifically to the service, emphasizing that verb use could dilute the brand.^[5] Courts have supported this stance, as in a 2017 Ninth Circuit ruling that rejected a genericide claim against the "Google" trademark, finding that common verb usage alone does not render it generic for search engines.^[30]

Linguistic and Cultural Impact

Verbification in English

The verbification of "google" exemplifies zero-derivation, a linguistic process in English where a noun is converted directly into a verb without morphological changes or affixes, relying solely on syntactic context to signal the shift. This mechanism, also known as conversion, is prevalent in the language for denoting actions associated with technological innovations, allowing nouns like "Google" (the search engine) to function as verbs meaning "to search the internet using Google." Similar patterns appear in other tech-derived neologisms, such as "to email" from the noun "email," "to text" from "text message," and "to surf" evolving from the phrase "surf the web" to denote browsing online.^[31] Corpus analyses reveal the rapid entrenchment of "google" as a verb in contemporary English usage. In the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), a 1-billion-word collection of texts from 1990 onward, the verb form surpasses noun occurrences post-2005, reflecting its integration into everyday discourse amid the search engine's market dominance. This shift underscores zero-derivation's efficiency in adapting language to new technologies, with the verb form appearing in diverse genres like spoken language, fiction, and academic writing by the mid-2000s. Stylistic variations in the verb's presentation highlight ongoing tensions between linguistic evolution and trademark protection. Dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) list the verb as "Google" with capitalization, while noting its common use in lowercase; American counterparts like Merriam-Webster define it capitalized but acknowledge lowercase usage in practice.^[2][27] British style guides, including The Guardian's, recommend capitalization ("I Googled it") even in verbal use to honor the brand, contrasting with more informal lowercase tendencies in casual British writing; American styles like AP follow suit by capitalizing. Formal writing often avoids the verb altogether, per Google's brand guidelines, which prohibit its generic use as an action to prevent trademark dilution.^[32][9]

Global and Multilingual Usage

The verb form of "google" has been widely adopted as a loanword in Romance languages, where it integrates into native morphology by adding verbal suffixes. In Spanish, for instance, "googlear" emerged in the early 2000s as a direct borrowing, conjugated like standard -ar verbs to mean searching online via the Google engine; variants like "guglear" also appear, reflecting phonetic adaptation to Spanish orthography.^[33] Similarly, Italian uses "googlare" and Portuguese "googlar," preserving the English stem while aligning with local inflection patterns.^[33] In non-Romance languages, adaptations often involve calques or light verb constructions rather than pure loanwords. Norwegian employs "å google," a direct infinitive borrowing treated as a regular verb, while some Germanic languages like German use "googeln" with umlaut adjustments.^[33] In Asian contexts, Japanese integrates it as "guguru" (ググる), a verbified form using the suru auxiliary for actions, and Telugu relies on periphrastic structures like "do Google" to convey the search action.^[33][8] These variations highlight how the verb adapts to typological differences, such as agglutinative endings in Japanese or analytic constructions in Dravidian languages.^[8] Regional usage correlates strongly with Google's market dominance. In Europe, where Google holds over 90% search share in most countries, the verb proliferates in everyday speech across languages like French ("googler") and Swedish ("att googla").^[33] Asia shows similar high adoption in Google-reliant markets, such as Japan and India, but penetration is markedly lower in China, where Baidu held over 75% of searches in the early 2010s but approximately 60% as of 2024, and local alternatives like "baidu" serve as the default verb for online querying.^[34][8][35] By the 2010s, "google" as a verb appeared in dictionaries and corpora across at least 19 languages spanning nine families, from Indo-European to Sino-Tibetan, demonstrating its rapid global lexical integration.^[8] Broader compilations identify verbal forms in over 25 languages, underscoring the term's status as a near-universal calque for internet searching.^[33] In academic and professional settings, this adoption sometimes extends to semantic shifts, where "to google" implies hasty or uncredited online sourcing, echoing broader concerns over digital research ethics. As of 2025, the verb continues to evolve with AI integrations, though adoption in AI-alternative markets like China remains limited.

Societal and Technological Implications

Influence on Information Seeking

The verb "to google" has profoundly democratized access to knowledge by enabling instantaneous retrieval of information from an ever-expanding web index. Launched in 1998 with an initial index of 26 million web pages, Google's search engine grew rapidly to encompass over one billion pages by 2000, facilitating broad public exposure to diverse sources that were previously limited to libraries or specialized databases.^[36] This expansion has empowered individuals worldwide to explore topics ranging from scientific research to cultural histories without institutional barriers, fostering a more informed global populace. The practice of googling has induced significant behavioral shifts in information seeking, often referred to as the "Google effect," where users increasingly rely on external digital storage rather than internal memory. A 2011 study by researchers at Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Harvard University demonstrated that people are less likely to remember facts they know can be easily searched online, instead prioritizing recall of search strategies and locations, such as typing terms into Google. This transactive memory approach allows cognitive resources to shift toward higher-order processing, like analysis and synthesis, enhancing overall learning efficiency rather than rote memorization.^[37] In educational contexts, googling has been integrated into K-12 curricula to build research competencies, with teachers incorporating search skill lessons to guide student inquiries. For instance, educators at schools like Ralph D. Butler Elementary in Massachusetts assign "searcher" roles where students practice refining queries using operators like quotation marks for exact phrases or the minus sign to exclude irrelevant results, such as searching "Saturn -car" to focus on the planet.^[38] Similarly, programs from Common Sense Education teach K-12 students to use the "site:" filter (e.g., site:.edu) to prioritize credible academic sources, enabling more targeted exploration of topics like climate change or historical events in classroom projects.^[39] These methods appear in standards-aligned lessons, promoting digital literacy alongside core subjects. More recently, as of 2025, Google's integration of artificial intelligence through AI Overviews—launched in May 2024—has further transformed information seeking by providing generative AI-summarized responses at the top of search results for complex queries. This feature, which appeared in about 13% of global queries by mid-2025, has increased the use of longer, more intricate searches by 49% while reducing organic click-through rates to 0.64% for affected results, as users increasingly rely on synthesized overviews rather than visiting multiple sources.^[40][41] Such changes streamline knowledge acquisition but raise questions about source verification and depth of engagement.^[42] Googling has also yielded measurable efficiency gains in fact-checking and daily information tasks, reducing the time required for verification compared to traditional methods. A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that 62% of U.S. smartphone owners used their devices—often via Google search—for quick lookups like health information, underscoring how mobile access streamlines real-time fact-finding and decision-making.^[43] This immediacy supports broader trends where 87% of internet users reported improved ability to learn new things through online searches, highlighting the verb's role in accelerating knowledge acquisition without exhaustive manual effort.^[44]

Criticisms and Alternatives

The widespread use of "google" as a verb has raised concerns about information overload, primarily through the "filter bubble" effect, where personalized algorithms limit exposure to diverse viewpoints and reinforce biases. Coined by Eli Pariser in his 2011 book, this phenomenon occurs as search engines tailor results based on user history, potentially creating echo chambers that skew perceptions of reality. Such personalization, while convenient, can exacerbate polarization by prioritizing familiar content over challenging or alternative perspectives. Privacy issues further complicate reliance on "google," as the verb often implies using Google's ecosystem, which tracks user data extensively through accounts to refine searches and ads. Google's My Activity feature compiles search histories, locations, and interactions when signed in, enabling detailed profiling that raises surveillance concerns.^[45] The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective in 2018, prompted scrutiny, culminating in a €50 million fine against Google in 2019 for inadequate transparency and consent in personalized advertising practices.^[46] This regulatory action highlighted how data tracking tied to search behaviors can infringe on user rights without clear opt-in mechanisms.^[46] Dependency on "google" has also been linked to diminished critical thinking, with studies suggesting that easy access to instant answers reduces efforts in memory retention and analytical processing. Research indicates that frequent reliance on search engines fosters a "cognitive offloading" habit, where users outsource thinking to technology, potentially weakening problem-solving skills over time.^[47] In response to these drawbacks, alternatives have emerged as potential verbs or tools to diversify search habits. Microsoft's Bing, launched in 2009, was explicitly designed with aspirations to become a verb like "google," offering decision-focused results and integration with AI features to counter personalization pitfalls.^[48] Similarly, DuckDuckGo, founded in 2008 as a privacy-centric engine, promotes "duck it" as its official verb, emphasizing anonymous searches without tracking or bubbles to appeal to users wary of data collection.^[49] For specialized needs, Wolfram Alpha, introduced in 2009, serves as a computational alternative, providing structured answers to factual and mathematical queries rather than web links, thus encouraging precise inquiry over broad browsing.^[50] These options highlight a shift toward more intentional, less monopolistic information-seeking practices.