Being Googled

[Baker, John]

        I don't think we're obligated to accept the creators' word for a term's origin if we have reason to believe that their account is inaccurate or incomplete.  Page and Brin may have thought that acknowledging "google" as a source for their name would imply derivation from the Barney Google comic strip and song.

        I do agree that most current uses of "Googling" refer to the search engine, not the pre-existing verb (whose status as slang seems doubtful to me).  I thought the older word was worth recording, though.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Wilton [mailto:dave at WILTON.NET]
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 8:38 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Being Googled

The verb "google" meaning to stare may date to the 80s, but presumably
Messrs. Page and Brin know why they chose the name for their company and
search engine. If they say it's from the mathematical term, who are we to
argue?

And the use to mean conduct a search on the web is most definitely from the
name of the search engine, not from a fairly obscure slang verb.