To ‘Google’ — now legit

“Google” was officially added to the most-stringent of grammarian resources, the Oxford English Dictionary in recent weeks.

To google” has been considered by other resources — and of course casually — as a legitimate verb for quite a while now.

But now that Merriam-Webster has confirmed to Google’s verbage, I’m left wondering — along with Neil at InfoWorld — if ever the verb will lose its copyright-mandated capital “G.”

The bad news, as far as this concerned, is the long standing predecessors in official tech lingo: The capitalizing of both the “W” on “Web site” and the “I” on “Internet.” But neither of those are verbs, so I’ll ask, how long did it take before the capital “X” was slashed off “to xerox?” (Granted, xerographic is a similar word, but the word “Xerox” itself is most definitely protected).

UPDATE: The L.A. Times reports that Merriam-Webster has defined “google” — small “g.” Good news from the fine newspaper that is not afraid to divert from AP style, commonly using website (one word) and internet (small “i”) as well as the pathetic “Southland (not in reference to the Lynyrd Skynyrd song).

Pew: Nearly 50 Million Create Own Web Content

Another great study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The Technology & Media Use report discloses that while “adoption of high-speed internet at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 than in the same time frame from 2004 to 2005,” nearly 50 million Americans have posted their own content to the web.

At GigaOm, Robert Young believes that MySpace and other social-networking hubs are the primary reason for the uptick in user-generated content:

To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the ?products? are the people?

The Pew report also points out the disappearing digital divide. More web postings are generated from within household’s under the $50,000 income threshold, than above it.

VoIP set-ups like Skype and municipal broadband projects taken on by the likes of Earthlink are also breaking down big-money barriers to broadband.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad GOOG?

Hard to disagree with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who publicly takes the Yahoo-Ebay partnership in stride. “Its good for everybody on the Internet,” he said, according to eWeek.

Google’s stock still sits pretty, with a 1999-style inflated valuation but with a solid and admirably successful business plan.

The eBay/Yahoo “strategic partnership” is indeed a glowing green light for the internet boom survivors, and it means alot more than say, Google recent investment in 5% of AOL (TWX). eBay needs help with advertising to keep their listing prices from rising (as they have been) and Yahoo! gets to co-brand Skype and Paypal. Add that to Yahoo!’s stable of sky’s-the-limit goodies such as del.icio.us, Flickr, and upcoming, to mention a few outright purchases.

Both companies will reap the benefits of added page views (Yahoo is already #1 and eBay #9, according to Alexa). As the big papers are saying — its a sign of fear or its look out Ma Goog. (see also, Barry’s post @ Content Matters).

Rafat @ Paid Content sums it up from the market analysts perspective. Search Engine Lowdown sums up the tech value. Battelle calls it “Yahoo’s first major syndication win in years.”