~10 years ago I would say “google it” often. But now I don’t think I say that at all, and would say “search for it” or similar.
I don’t think I really consciously decided to stop saying it, but I suppose it just felt weird to explicitly refer to one search engine while using another.
Just me? Do you say, or hear others say, “google it” in $current_year? Is it different for techies and normies?
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A friend and I usually call it “duck it” or “ducking it” when talking to each other. To others it’s “googling”.
Fun side note: Someone here on lemmy a while back was having a fit about something I said because it was from one of Google services, and while he’s right that Google is evil and invasive and all that I had to chuckle when they told me to Google one specific thing on the matter. “Don’t use Google, Google it for more info.”
I’ve been working on not saying “Google it” for quite a while. After saying it for over a fucking decade, its a hard habit to break. But I’m finally getting used to saying just “Look it up”
Did you try googling it on ddg?
Lol you technically can google from ddg using !g before your search and it goes directly there.
I still do sometimes, despite using DDG for about a decade now and working in IT myself. Haven’t met anyone who doesn’t say it in my area.
Same. I don’t really use Google search any more, but I still keep the phrase. It’s just something people understand.
You could say that you’re “Binging it”
Yes.
I genuinely think we could one day reach a point where Google is no longer the dominant way to search for things, and yet people will still say “Google it”.
Yeah, happens all the time. Can’t think of an English example right now but the German verb for putting on makeup is “schminken” although nobody really knows the company “Schminke” anymore.
I know for a fact I’ve said I was going to “Xerox some copies” on a machine that was almost certainly not manufactured by the Xerox Holdings Corporation.
Xerox for making copies
Just learnt of a new example today. In Australia a common kind of small tree is called a “wattle”. It’s flowers are yellow, everyone in Australia knows about them, and the flower is the floral emblem of the country (the yellow and green colours of Australian sports teams is probably from the flower too).
The name “wattle” however comes from “wattle and daub” (wikipedia), a method of construction that uses woven branches filled with some form of clay\cement like material such as mud. “Wattle” trees were ideal for and just used very often for “wattle and daub” building in early colonial times that it’s name became “wattle”, which generally refers to the woven branches. Now no one knows that construction technique or its name, but the know the tree’s name very well.
Otherwise, the save icon being a floppy disc is a clear visual example in technology that’s just now-ish passing beyond its redundancy.
Otherwise, the save icon being a floppy disc is a clear visual example in technology that’s just now-ish passing beyond its redundancy.
It cracks me up that cars have a phone icon based on a handset style from an old home landline phone. I guess enough businesses still use them?
So does my iPhone for that matter.
So does my android, but I somehow find the icon in the car even more entertaining since it reminds me of when the first cars with mobile phones in the 80s actually had handsets!
One English example is to “hoover” - people say it all the time when they mean using the vacuum cleaner, whether or not it’s made by Hoover.
“Jello” is a brand name, which I think may be the example most people in the US specifically don’t realize. There are tons of others.
I think “googling” counts because a) it kinda makes sense even without the branding, b) I hear it all the time, and c) I say it myself even though I haven’t used Google as my default search engine for ages.
You know, I mostly only know the US examples of this and always assumed it was just more common here, now I’m wondering about generic trademarks around the world.
I know a few. Xerox is used for photocopying in other languages. Kleenex is the accepted term for “paper tissue” in Spain. Zodiac and Vespa are used for specific types of ship and motorcycle in multiple places, even when not manufactured by those brands. Thermos is a brand name, used in multiple countries as well. Sellotape is used in the UK for transparent sticky tape.
I don’t speak every regional variant of every language, but the short answer is this is definitely not a US thing. At all.
We definitely use all of those in the US as well, though I haven’t heard the Zodiac one. I was asking more for regional things like this rather than saying it was just something in the US.
I have never heard a person say “hoover” as a verb
They said English, but they mean British English.
I also use it in reference to hoovering up a fat line of blow into my schnozz
Really? Maybe it’s a UK thing, I dunno. Very, very common here :-)
Ever heard of hook and loop fasteners? The Velcro company would really like it if you called it hook and loop fasteners.
They REALLY would. (A few other examples are mentioned also)
Do you have any reference for that? The internet claims that word is around since the 15th century.
I think I saw it on TV. Guess I was wrong.
You still have a point. Other examples would be “Nutella”, “Tesa”, “Edding”, famously also “Tempo”, “Zewa” …
“Selters” in the East for sparkling water. And I guess for the English language Champagne qualifies, although the clarification in this case even became a meme.
Ive been saying “search online” instead
I also try to say “look it up online” as much as possible in stead of Googling it.
This is important I think. While the word has clearly stuck beyond the actual company’s services … the word “search” in IT hasn’t died and will likely still be used. If the word ever fades away, it may be in part because “search” lived.
I tell people to altavista it
Encarta it!
AskJeeves it!
Infoseek it
Uh, “Bing it” ! 🥴
I always say things like “you could look it up” or “did you look it up”. That way people can use the search engine or database of their choice. Americans are so trained to call things by a corporate name / brand / product. Kleenex, qtips, advil, tylenol, dockers, vaseline, some people don’t even know the real name of those products. And saying “google it” has almost become an insult on so many levels.
It is weird to observe younger generations using search engines with how they treat them as some sort of fully natural language processing butlers.
Where you or I might formulate a query as: “films famous within Italy” or simply “famous Italian films”
Gen alpha will generally conduct that same search as: “What are the movies that are most famous in Italy?”
Does it give a different result? I think it doesn’t matter. In that case it might be more natural to speak in full sentences for those who never had the need to be specific and concise to a search engine. Because there used to be a need to be specific and concise to have the search engine give you a good result. Now it’s so heavily optimised and commercialised, it doesn’t really matter what you input.
I think it used to, the way I search as a netizen for 20 years is definitely more of a “keyword” style like the original commenter mentioned, but that comes down to how I became “trained” to search as a lot of the unnecessary words used to make the results less accurate in my experience. I think search engines have gotten better at figuring out what the root of the request is, while also serving up more crap in general due to SEO gaming.
Consistently. They even use the let me google it for you website, even though Google hasn’t looked like that for a while now.
I am particularly cautious with my words, so I’ll say search for it on the web and when talking about my own research, I’ll talk about what I was able to find via a simple websearch.
Sadly, fewer and fewer things are readily available via a simple websearch anymore, and I have to engage in sophisticated websearches in which I rotate keywords or key phrases and their synonyms.
Yes, same way i say i need a “Kleenex” to open the door to the “Porta potty” so i don’t have to shit in the “dumpster”.
Edit: if it were actually a commercial, it would be the best commercial ever created.
I say “look it up”. Applies to lots of forms of search, be it google, DDG, YouTube, Wikipedia, a dictionary, a manual, pretty much anything.
I don’t know if this is true everywhere, but I can say my elementary school kid and friends all say “search it up”, and although they have school-issued Chromebooks and use Google for search, I can’t actually recall ever hearing them say “google it”.
Me, all over this thread:
I primarily use DDG, but the vast majority of people I talk to (including other tech savvy people) use Google. I feel like “search” is too generic (search where?), but “search the internet” is weird. And saying “Bing it” or “Duck it” or whatever just sounds overly contrarian. But if I say “Google it”, people know exactly what I mean.
So yes, I will “Google where to buy some bandaids” by searching DDG for adhesive bandages.
You could google it and find out.
