Being Googled

[Mark A Mandel]

On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Bethany K. Dumas wrote:

#On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Lesa Dill wrote:
#Why isn't it "Yahoo! John >Smith" or "DogPile John Smith"?
#
#I don't know.

How about potential confusion, plus what I believe I have read to be
Google's preeminence in the amount of use it gets?

"Yahoo" already exists in everyday English. "Dog pile" is meaningful,
although I'm pretty sure the connotation that I have for it is not the
one the creators intended! ("Watch your step, there's a dog pile!")
"Yahoo! John Smith", especially with that dratted exclamation mark,
reads as = 'hurray for J.S.'.

"Google", OTOH, is novel to most speakers. Yes, I know about Barney
Google, and I know about the song, but I'd bet a cookie (the edible
kind) that to the great majority of English-speakers who know the word,
the first meaning that comes to mind is the search engine.

-- Mark A. Mandel