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).