Google is NOT a verb

I don’t care what Merriam Webster says, Google is not a verb! I realize that there are some who will not share my views on this and I look forward to reading about it on THEIR blogs. Before Google hit the search engine scene, I don’t recall hearing about anybody who had to Yahoo! or Webcrawler or Excite something when they were looking for it on the internet. For those who do not recognize it, those three things that I just mentioned are all internet search engines. They used go be very commonly used and had their own chance at “fame,” if you will. but Then along came Google. Apparently they either did it better than everybody esle did or their interface was just better than everyone else’s. Whatever the deciding factor was, Google prevailed over the others.

But I still maintain that you do NOT Google things and you do NOT Google for them. You SEARCH for them. Once again, Merriam Webster, in her infinite wisdom has decided to redefine a word….NOT based on its actual meaning, but based on the way the WORLD decides that it is going use it. How much does the person (or group of people) get paid that makes these decisions that change our vocabulary. Too much if you ask me. If I really wnated to find out I guess I could do a search. Meanwhile, some people I know might try to Google it. On that particular score, none of us would come up with the hits that we want, but it sure did make for a good example! I remember when I used to cycle through the search engines….Netscape, Webcrawler, Excite, Momma, Ask Jeeves (Jeeves has retired, now its just ask.com), Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, infoseek, hotbot; and I’m sure there are some that didn’t make my list. Then came Google. Google does it all and then some. It has many other offerings, resources and utilities. They have expanded quite well. But even with everything that they have to offer, I still maintain, that Google is not, and never will be a vervb. Oh, and while I’m at it…..neither is Mapquest!