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Let's Ditch Google (Verb)

59 points · 77 comments · speckx

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abcthingx · 1790789060 · focus · HN ↗
Say what you will, but using "google" is just the fastest way to say "search the web." Unless a better, equally convenient phrase comes along, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
1. dumberquestions · 1790789169 · focus · HN ↗
  If you read the page, it suggests "to look up" instead of "to google", which looks like the same amount of syllables.
  1. Retr0id · 1790789326 · focus · HN ↗
    look up has the same number of syllables but it does not have quite the same semantic density, you can look something up without using a web search engine.
  2. catapart · 1790789391 · focus · HN ↗
    there's some weird hang ups in English that you have to be cautious of, though.
    "Hmm. Not sure. Maybe google it?" is pretty innocuous no matter the context.
    "Hmm. Not sure. Maybe look it up?" can sound dismissive or condescending in some cases to some people's ear.
    It's a weird quirk of English where being non-specific is like saying "I don't know, you figure it out", where being very specific is like saying "Here's the solution (that I would use)".
  3. saghm · 1790789598 · focus · HN ↗
    That definitely puts it ahead of a lot of proposed replacements that end up being more syllables (which I firmly believe puts them in a disadvantage; I'm still looking for a reasonably terse generic word for "the person who delivers my mail" because "letter carrier" is a mouthful, and "mail person" just sounds like a weird way of referring to a man or boy, which is the opposite of what the generic term is for).
    I'm still not convinced this is quite as ergonomic as it could be though because of a quirk of phrasing; instead of saying "I googled that", you'd need to say "I looked that up". As someone who often struggles to enunciate super well most of the time without my speech becoming slow to the point of tedious, it does still feel a bit more verbose because "googled" is such an awkward word that you can sort of pronounce it almost like 1.5 syllables by softening the second 'g' to produce something like "I goo-ulled that" and its still is intelligible. It still might be close enough that it can catch on, and I'm not at all opposed to it because of this minor inconvenience, but I do think that there are factors beyond a pure syllable count come into play even just in terms of linguistics rather than social convention.
  4. applfanboysbgon · 1790790496 · focus · HN ↗
    Which falls apart as soon as you actually use the word outside of a dictionary. Nobody says "to google". They say "I googled it", or "google it", the equivalents being "I looked it up" and "look it up", each introducing another word and syllable. "I looked up" and "look up" don't work. It's embarrassing somebody could write a suggestion like this without applying 3 entire seconds of thought to it.
    kazinator · 1790793772 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
2. tyingq · 1790789287 · focus · HN ↗
  They are actively transforming it into "ask Gemini" though. Which for me is often wrong. The organic search results are farther down, and if a lucrative term...you have to scroll past ads also. And the quality is not what it once was.
  So Google is polluting what it means anyway.
3. geocar · 1790789367 · focus · HN ↗
  I just "search".
  I can't think how anyone is going to be confused and think I want them to check the bins or something, but maybe we search for different things on the web.
  1. santadays · 1790790570 · focus · HN ↗
    My kids and their friends say “search it up”. I have no idea if that’s representative of the tween/teen population. But google as a verb will likely die on its own. It’s been a while since I’ve xeroxed anything.
  2. kazinator · 1790793834 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
4. JoshTriplett · 1790789420 · focus · HN ↗
  "search for" is just as short, and "search" is shorter.
5. kazinator · 1790793942 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
sodapopcan · 1790789066 · focus · HN ↗
[delayed]
lern_too_spel · 1790789083 · focus · HN ↗
If you regularly google something on Kagi, making google a generic term for search, Google loses its trademark protection. <a href="https://hallboothsmith.com/the-ninth-circuit-rules-google-is-not-a-generic-term-2/" rel="nofollow">https://hallboothsmith.com/the-ninth-circuit-rules-google-is...
1. monknomo · 1790789282 · focus · HN ↗
  I prefer to google on duck duck go
  1. lern_too_spel · 1790824786 · focus · HN ↗
    Whatever floats your boat. OP said they use Kagi, so that's why I used that example.
baggachipz · 1790789105 · focus · HN ↗
I've been doing this as well. Though ubiquitous brand names die hard, like "kleenex" and "saran wrap".
1. sodapopcan · 1790789269 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
2. vel0city · 1790790216 · focus · HN ↗
  Don't forget to stop saying Velcro and start using hook-and-loop fastener and interlocking slide fasteners instead of Zippers!
bitpush · 1790789108 · focus · HN ↗
Fun fact - Companies dont like their product name becoming a verb.
1. bigyabai · 1790789216 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm going to have to see the statistics supporting this claim.
  1. sodapopcan · 1790789417 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
2. mrdw · 1790789236 · focus · HN ↗
  source: trust me bro
  1. sodapopcan · 1790789357 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. mirrir · 1790789481 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.networksolutions.com/typepad?siteID=100&channelID=P99C100S653N0B5A1D0E0000V111" rel="nofollow">https://www.networksolutions.com/typepad?siteID=100&channelI...
    <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3006486.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3006486.stm
    <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21944834" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21944834
    its okay to not look but its weird to think other people don't.
3. snapcaster · 1790789263 · focus · HN ↗
  companies are stupid then, because it's obviously good for them. You're maybe thinking about how trademark lawyers pursue use of it but that's for tactical reasons not because it isn't great marketing
  1. WorldMaker · 1790789936 · focus · HN ↗
    Losing a trademark to a generic word can make marketing a lot harder, though. A company often needs a new brand then, because everyone else can use their old brand in the marketplace.
    It would be fascinating for Alphabet to lose Google the brand to being a generic word. (To be fair, it is something that maybe should have happened already.) Kagi or DDG or someone could use a domain like google.new or google.tech to easily retrain old habits of some users. What is Alphabet going to do in that case? If Google is no longer a trademark but a generic word, do they focus on having the "Alphabet Brand Google" or "The Original Google, by Alphabet"? Either way, that's harder to market and maybe easier to build a fresh brand than fight the generic terminology.
    iteria · 1790791663 · focus · HN ↗
    Someone tried to make them lose the trademark. They kept it in court because people literally mean search on Google when they say Google. They don't mean search in general. And that's fair, I don't say Google as a verb now that I use Kagi for search.
    WorldMaker · 1790801994 · focus · HN ↗
    I have and continued to say that "I googled it on the Bings". Some people have used it as the generic verb.
    vel0city · 1790795427 · focus · HN ↗
    But "googling" it isn't really genericizing it. When people say "google it" they still almost always mean "search the internet using Google".
    Does the average consumer use "google it" to mean "search with Bing"?
    WorldMaker · 1790801585 · focus · HN ↗
    I know people that have used it that way in a while. Myself included: I certainly say that. I haven't intentionally used Google the search engine in years, but I use it at the generic term for an internet search.
4. stldev · 1790791054 · focus · HN ↗
  Marketing teams kill for this. Every business wants this in the beginning. Once you're big enough that it threatens the trademark, the game changes.
Nales · 1790789239 · focus · HN ↗
I have some triggers that make me stop reading or watching something. Using "google" as a verb is one of them. I perceive people doing that as blindly following a sort of cult, and I am not interested to learn anything from this kind of people.
Quothling · 1790789287 · focus · HN ↗
Around here "google it" has been replaced by "spørg botten" which means "ask the bot" or "spørg GPT". I've been putting an effort into saying "look it up" and stuff like it instead of "google it" for a couple of years now. Looks like it'll probably be wasted effort soon though.
1. echelon · 1790789391 · focus · HN ↗
  I really like this one. Unfortunately it doesn't quite make the jump to English, but I love the concept of it.
asdfman123 · 1790789329 · focus · HN ↗
This site is just foreign state actor propaganda now. Regardless of how you feel about US tech monopolies, they're doing their best to undermine them.
1. sdcfgy · 1790789385 · focus · HN ↗
  Wiping tears away with my kleenex right now.
2. Analemma_ · 1790789536 · focus · HN ↗
  Even if this was true (it's not), it wouldn't make any difference to my actions. "What's good for GM is good for America" was false 70 years ago and has not become any more true in the intervening period.
  1. asdfman123 · 1790790669 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe you could argue that we'd be better off with big tech, but foreign state actors have absolutely destroyed political discourse in the US. It's the reason why we all distrust each other and are sliding into autocracy.
    Don't listen to them, they're not your friends. And if you listen to enough motivated reasoning, you'll lose track of what's true and what's not.
3. owebmaster · 1790789547 · focus · HN ↗
  > they're doing their best to undermine them.
  Well... thanks?
4. seizethecheese · 1790789554 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
5. nancyminusone · 1790789556 · focus · HN ↗
  What if I feel as though they deserve to be undermined?
6. kalleboo · 1790791053 · focus · HN ↗
  Nobody is pushing for Baidu or Yandex here
imhoguy · 1790789338 · focus · HN ↗
Searching is dying. I mostly hear "ask Claude/ChatGPT" these days. Googling will most of the time result in wall of slop on the first page unless you search with the exact source or site hint.
1. andrewl-hn · 1790789595 · focus · HN ↗
  Around me people use the verb google for that, too: "I googled AI / GPT and it told me ..."
sdcfgy · 1790789345 · focus · HN ↗
Been correcting my kids on this for the last 10 years. It works.
This was triggered by my mother Googling something on Bing.
semiquaver · 1790789351 · focus · HN ↗
I have no problem with this person choosing to use different language to describe this.
But I do have a problem with their attempt to convince others to do so (primarily in the title). This sort of linguistic prescriptivism seems in vogue for political reasons lately, most saliently in the hordes of people who insist that you must not use natural anthropomorphic language when talking about LLMs.
1. ButlerianJihad · 1790844095 · focus · HN ↗
  Okay, just so I understand you here: you are policing other peoples polcing of language and we must accept your imposition of norms of policing language, currently which means not policing it, except to ensure that nobody polices it. Er, almost nobody.
  1. switchbak · 1790865799 · focus · HN ↗
    False equivocation.
    Resisting force and asking to keep things as they are is a different thing than forcing people to change their language.
  2. semiquaver · 1790867628 · focus · HN ↗
    How dare you police my policing of other people’s policing of language?
tikhonj · 1790789362 · focus · HN ↗
I guess if you use kagi, you can say "I'll kag it" instead
s0ar3k · 1790789401 · focus · HN ↗
You could use the Andalusian Spanish word for looking up something, "bichear" :D
combobyte · 1790789429 · focus · HN ↗
Happy to ditch Google, full stop.
serbuvlad · 1790789457 · focus · HN ↗
I think this is focusing entirely on the wrong thing.
Non-Mac computers are still called "PC's", but IBM has nothing to gain from this. Similarly, copy machines at least in my country are called "Xerox's" but it's very rarely a machine from the Xerox company.
If you want to de-throne Google, you cannot do so by policing language. You have to build a better search (not more private! better!).
glerk · 1790789493 · focus · HN ↗
I hear “ask GPT”/“ask Claude” much more often these days.
rplnt · 1790789494 · focus · HN ↗
Searching for webpages, at least on google, have died like 10 years ago. Even if you knew the exact domain and words, it wouldn't be able to find it somehow. Always pushing "fresh results", changing your words (quotes or not), translating languages, etc... I tried to be smart and ruined everything that was good about it. On top of that web changed a lot and loads of content moved to private platforms. And now "AI".
Corence · 1790789642 · focus · HN ↗
There's already articles saying younger people are already doing this: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/magazine/google-it-search-it-up.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/magazine/google-it-search...
Telaneo · 1790789645 · focus · HN ↗
Just google it with Bing.
It pains me that DuckDuckGo has the name that it has, since you can't even pretend to want to use that as a verb. You can use generic terms, and that's what I tend to do (usually just 'look it up (on the web)', alternativly 'search the web'), but there's good reason google entered the common lexicon and functionally replaced those terms, and finding a replacement that is as good is very, very hard.
1. klez · 1790789754 · focus · HN ↗
  > It pains me that DuckDuckGo has the name that it has, since you can't even pretend to want to use that as a verb
  "DDG it" rolls off the tongue
  1. Telaneo · 1790789879 · focus · HN ↗
    It absolutely does not. It's marginally better then the full word, but it's the same number of syllables.
2. kelseydh · 1790789892 · focus · HN ↗
  I have used DuckDuckGo for many years, and sadly over 75% of the time I find myself adding !g to the search to get the much better Google result. I'm not sure why I still bother with DuckDuckGo.
3. t0mpr1c3 · 1790793347 · focus · HN ↗
  No need to verb the name, it has one built in.
  "Let me DuckDuckGo that for you." "I already DuckDuckWent."
  1. Telaneo · 1790793530 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm DuckDuckGonna look that up for ya.
jmathai · 1790789915 · focus · HN ↗
I'm not anti-Google by any means. But their products just aren't as essential in my life like they were 10 years ago. I'm not in the majority but ...
Google Photos -> Immich (better)
Google Search -> Claude (better)
Google Calendar -> Apple Calendar (better)
Google Chrome -> Safari or Firefox - someone please make a basic browser that can handle 30 tabs without needing gigs of memory
Google Maps -> .... I've been seeing if MapQuest is "good enough"
GMail -> .... I think Fastmail is "good enough" - GMail's bells and whistles aren't as important anymore
Cider9986 · 1790790586 · focus · HN ↗
Brave search is the best alternative to Google. They have an independent index and good UI. Very rarely do I switch to another engine. Brave does well at surfacing forum threads and the AI summary has been surprisingly good for a while.
<a href="https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/" rel="nofollow">https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/
kalleboo · 1790790744 · focus · HN ↗
I've been doing this since I started using Kagi since it sounds weird to say "I googled it and..." when I didn't actually use Google. I'm also not saying "I kagiied it" since half the people I talk to don't know what it is and for the rest it still sounds awkward so I've been going with variations for "I searched for it", "I did a web search", "I looked it up"...
While "google" may end up like the "kleenex" of web search, it seems more likely that people stop searching the web at all and just ask AI instead.
There's no good verb for "I asked ChatGPT", is there? "I slopped it"?
edit: maybe I'll bring back "bing it" since nobody would actually assume you're using bing for it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrEHTd_3vD0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrEHTd_3vD0
1. advisedwang · 1790791795 · focus · HN ↗
  The kids where I tutored say "I searched it up"
2. weezing · 1790792901 · focus · HN ↗
  I told a clanker to do a web search for me
3. 1718627440 · 1790793471 · focus · HN ↗
  Here teenagers say "Chattie said ..."
4. tim333 · 1790860190 · focus · HN ↗
  I tend to say googled still as google has the AI thing. Asked AI?
ai-x · 1790793138 · focus · HN ↗
English is a great language precisely because it listens to no one preaching "we should do this or that". It just evolves organically
1. kazinator · 1790793708 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
t0mpr1c3 · 1790793606 · focus · HN ↗
Also, ungoogle the browser: <a href="https://github.com/ungoogled-software" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ungoogled-software
mac3n · 1790793657 · focus · HN ↗
i "altavista'd it.
AuthAuth · 1790794579 · focus · HN ↗
American companies are so good at getting their brands to be the name of a thing.
1. hurfdurf · 1790843734 · focus · HN ↗
  Tesa, Tempo, Zewa, Fön...
sshine · 1790796041 · focus · HN ↗
I anticipate the day where saying you did a web search is looked weirdly upon.
You did... what? You mean you asked AI?
ButlerianJihad · 1790844482 · focus · HN ↗
Google’s masterstroke is their very choice of name. Google, or Google Search, was originally named “Backrub” (and YouTube was founded as a hookup/dating app) but essentially, Google has reduced the developed world to seemingly incoherent baby-talk gurgling.
The number "googol" was a term coined, in my understanding, because the mathematician was a new father, and his infant child was asked about the number 1e100, and replied with a goo-goo gurgle, which endeared the guy so much that he wrote about it.
So, by transitive means, “Google” is primitive, unadorned baby-talk gibberish, and since the simple eloquence of Microsoft products is now disfavored, we have regressed from adulthood to… Childhood’s End.

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