Being Googled

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:34 AM -0800 11/4/02, Dave Wilton wrote:
>  > In a message dated 11/4/02 7:24:11 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>>  susandgilbert at MSN.COM writes:
>>
>>  > When did being "Googled" become part of our lexicon?
>>  >  New Yorker cartoon features two men at a bar and one
>>  shudders and exclaims
>>  :
>>  >  "Whew! I feel like I have just been "Googled."
>>
>>  "Barney Google and his goo-goo-googly eyes" (a song whose age
>>  I won't even estimate) implies that "Google" (a proper name)
>>  has spawned the adjective "googly" and therefore it should
>>  not be improbable that someone would also use it as a verb
>>  ("Barney googled Miss X...").  Actually this derivation fits
>>  your context better than a derivation from the name of the
>>  Internet search engine.  In a bar (particularly if the bar
>>  in question is notorious as a pick-up bar) one is more likely
>>  to notice having eyed in a strange or remarkable manner than
>>  to notice one's Web pages have just been examined.
>
>Having seen the same cartoon, I immediately took it to be from the search
>engine, not googly eyes. "To google" is used not only to mean search a web
>page, but to "google" a person is to do a quick background check on that
>person, searching the web for references to them, not just to find their web
>pages. Often you google someone to find their current address or place of
>employment. In an earlier era the guy in the bar might have said, "someone
>just stepped on my grave." I've never heard anyone use "to google" simply to
>mean to look at someone.
>
FWIW, I saw the cartoon and immediately thought only of the
search-engine context, probably for the reasons Dave mentions.  And
if the caps in Susan's query were in the original caption (I don't
recall either way), that would clinch it.

larry