Tag: google

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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).

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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.”