There must be too many lawyers roaming around in tech land. Apparently Google's legal team is sending out letters to the media requesting that they not use Google as a verb. Just imagine.
Google Guy: Ok, so let's see, in our take over the world strategy, we want to become a household name. We want everyone to mention our product.
Google Lawyer: But what about verbs?
Google Guy: What about verbs?
Google Lawyer: I don't think we want to be known like Xerox, do we? I mean gee whiz, everybody anywhere who makes a copy says "Xerox this." What if, heaven forfend, somebody using some other search engine somewhere said, "google this" and it wasn't our product?
Google Guy: Um?
Google Lawyer: There's no way we could monetize that.
Google Guy: Umm?
Google Lawyer: We've got to put a stop to this right now.
Google Guy: Why is it a bad thing? It sort of has become a part of the vernacular. I think we've even gotten it mentioned as a verb in a dictionary or two. What's the harm?
Google Laywer: Leave that to us. We'll discover some.
Via Steve Rubel
