~10 years ago I would say “google it” often. But now I don’t think I say that at all, and would say “search for it” or similar.
I don’t think I really consciously decided to stop saying it, but I suppose it just felt weird to explicitly refer to one search engine while using another.
Just me? Do you say, or hear others say, “google it” in $current_year? Is it different for techies and normies?
“Jello” is a brand name, which I think may be the example most people in the US specifically don’t realize. There are tons of others.
I think “googling” counts because a) it kinda makes sense even without the branding, b) I hear it all the time, and c) I say it myself even though I haven’t used Google as my default search engine for ages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
You know, I mostly only know the US examples of this and always assumed it was just more common here, now I’m wondering about generic trademarks around the world.
I know a few. Xerox is used for photocopying in other languages. Kleenex is the accepted term for “paper tissue” in Spain. Zodiac and Vespa are used for specific types of ship and motorcycle in multiple places, even when not manufactured by those brands. Thermos is a brand name, used in multiple countries as well. Sellotape is used in the UK for transparent sticky tape.
I don’t speak every regional variant of every language, but the short answer is this is definitely not a US thing. At all.
We definitely use all of those in the US as well, though I haven’t heard the Zodiac one. I was asking more for regional things like this rather than saying it was just something in the US.
In the US it’s Scotch tape, we never had that UK brand, so it’s unheard of as a generic also.
And Hoover is a brand, but I guess wasn’t as dominant, so nearly everyone just says vacuum as the verb.
Maybe I was thinking of cellophane