By Ron ColemanThe Strategic Name Development Product Naming Blog writes about a fantasy ban of cliches and brand bastardizations. They include “something we’ve written about before, [namely how] the verbification and genericization of ‘google’ led to the banishment of the term ‘search.'”
Well, I’ve written about that before, too, and while I don’t advocate the replacement of “search” with “Google” — I still do all kinds of non-Google searching; Google has yet to figure out where I left my keys, for instance — I can’t agree with the proposed “ban” on this one.
Googlio, ergo sum.
Ron Coleman
[…] Now, this argument didn’t by and large fly when it came to domain names — usually, though there were exceptions, and important ones. I am leaning toward Wendy Davis’s view as well. (I wish I could figure out from the blog she writes on, Just an Online Minute, who she is — a journalist? A lawyer? Too common of a name to Google.) That doesn’t mean that false and misleading uses — such as buying the search term TIMEX to sell counterfeit Timex watches, or to sell other watches entirely without in any way commenting on or otherwise directly involving Timex watches — should be exempt from Lanham Act liability merely because the promotion of the discussion, commercial or otherwise, is by Internet search term. […]