Saying 'Google It' Makes You Sound Old

The term 'google' does a good job of saying 'internet search' with far fewer letters, and with much more uniqueness. That alone helped in the battle with 'Dog Pile' and Alta Vista.

I agree, that's why I keep it fresh with the kiddos by using the more hep "give it to Ask Jeeves" or "run it through gopher".

But since I also like to quack it with Duck Duck Go, daddy-o, I sometimes just say " I used a search engine..."

I've never got into turning business names into verbs, and I am from the generation that heavily used "Google it".

Nowadays, I have colleagues suggest to "Ask Claude/ChatGPT". I want to collaborate and build on the team experience, not ask a system that can hallucinate an answer!

The local young person here likes to say, "search it up!" Which I find amusing for reasons not completely understood. Either way, better than giving free advertising to a multinational spying firm.

I just skip the middle men at this point and tell people “open up your third eye”

I've never heard of "Google it". I've only ever said "Input it to a web search engine".

Didn't ask, don't care.

This is called antonomasia.

edit: is someone at meta/openai trying to age-shame me for using it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/magazine/google-it-search...

Alta Vista It

Thank god. Verbing corporate nouns needs to die.

RTFM

And?

I still say "Google it", but I don't use Google for search anymore -- haven't for almost two years, ever since I started subscribing to Kagi. If you're busting my ass about how I use "Google" as a verb, and you're still actually using Google to search, you can help yourself to a heaping serving of Shut The ** Up.

https://archive.is/Ucaxb No paywall

lmgtfy