Did Google's Branding team come up with this? Remember when Velcro went all in on protecting their brand and everyone started saying "Hook and loop fasteners" no?
yeah it's "google" even if i used Duck duck Go
i really doubt google wants people to *stop* using their brand name as a term for looking stuff up on the internet.
that it came to be used that way was a huge win for them. i would love to get it out of my vocabulary, especially since im trying to de-google my life.
Companies actually do hate this bc it runs the risk of losing the legal trademark. Escalator, dumpster, and linoleum are examples of trademarks that became genericized.
Google is big enough to probably prevent losing the trademark, but they don’t want people saying “google it on Bing” either.
