After working in the internet industry for over 7 years I have seen a great change in the number of search engine s that have come and gone and the branding strategies each have used. I remember the days that Yahoo was the big place for searching and phrases such as “do you yahoo” were publicised everywhere.

In the past 3 years Google has increased its search engine industry domination above all other competitors drastically. The new catch phrase for search engines is ‘Google it’. I have read some old articles about how tight Google has became with their trademarks and the use of the word ‘Google’. In 2006 the oxford dictionary placed the word ‘Googling’ in their dictionary Wikipedia explains this as:

“Googling someone, or to say that some brand or concept, “does (or doesn’t) google,” indicates whether or not information can be found on the subject using the Google engine”

Google have claimed in the past that they may sue people for breaking their trademark by using ‘googling’ without a capital. Lucky for us normal people who use the word ‘googling’ as a figure of speech is “not likely to face legal proceedings” (Google wants people to stop googling, By Will Sturgeon, Silicon.com). Like many other bloggers I don’t understand why Google has become so tight with this. I am sure every company would be happy to have their company name turned into a verb by its customers. So for Google branding their site and marketing it be the place to ‘Google’ things is not really what they were after what is it that they want?

Next week I will talk about how SEO is now expressed in numerous ways.