Google fights the trend to verb-alise

If anything in this column grabs your interest, don't even think about "googling" it.

As for turning it into some kind of "pod" - don't bother.

If you do, the lawyers from Google Inc and Apple Computer Inc might soon be trampling all over your web browser.

The two leaders of the technology industry are getting heavy over the use of their brand names.

Google as a verb is frowned upon. Pod as a generic term for broadcasts over the internet could be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Over the years, many companies have made futile, and ultimately self-defeating attempts to protect their corporate or brand names from entering the world's vocabulary as generic terms.

They invariably fail. Nobody owns the language, which is what makes it so strong.

And nobody can control the way we use it. By trying to do so, they make themselves look ridiculous.

That isn't likely to stop them from trying.

Google, which has its headquarters in Mountain View, California, is policing the use of its name.

The founder of the WordSpy web- site received a letter warning him against defining "to google" as a verb for finding out stuff about a person on the internet.

And humour is in similarly short supply at Apple. The company is cracking down on the use of the word "pod", on the grounds that it infringes the trademark on its iPod music player.

Its targets have included TightPod, a laptop-cover brand name produced by Terryfic.com in New Jersey.

Apple declined to comment for this column.

It isn't the first time lawyers have pocketed what are no doubt generous fees for trying to claim ownership of a word.

British entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who founded the low-cost airline EasyJet, had a long and costly legal battle with a North London restaurant called EasyPizza over the use of the word "easy."

The dispute was settled out of court in June.

A few optimists have even tried to take ownership of colours. The mobile-phone company Orange, a unit of France Telecom SA, has claimed ownership of the tone from which it takes its name, according to the legal website Out-Law.com.

And Deutsche Telekom AG had a go at taking control of the colour magenta.

Whether they checked with God first - after all, he would have a reasonable claim to original authorship, assuming he didn't have better things to do - isn't known.

Still, the only colour they are entitled to is red - for embarrassment over the presumption, arrogance and hubris involved in the attempt at asset control over words and colours.

All these companies are guilty of stunning hypocrisy.

Take Apple, for example. Wasn't there a fairly successful pop group in the 1960s that named its company after a certain fruit?

Indeed there was - and the surviving members of the Beatles have been fighting legal battles with the computer manufacturer over the rights to the name.

So Apple doesn't mind taking a name used by someone else - but objects to others adopting "pod".

Or how about Google? It has been involved in a series of battles with publishers over copyright infringement. Agence France-Presse, for example, is suing the company for US$17.5 million ($27.5 million) for using its material.

Google's entire business is based on directing web users to other people's material, none of which it created. What's the difference between that and borrowing the word "google"?

"You have to make sure your trademark is protected," said Google's London corporate communications coordinator, Laura Ainsworth.

Well, perhaps. But how can any single company hope to stake a claim to part of a language?

After all, the word google was around long before the internet. In the 1920s, Barney Google was a comic-strip hero and the subject of a popular song.

Likewise, pea farmers were using the word "pod" long before teenagers plugged music players into their ears.

As for the word "easy" - well it would be hard to think of a more absurd attempt by a company to assert control over what we can and can't call things.

Words that started life as brandnames have been entering the language for decades. We hoover the floor, and xerox documents.

And let's not forget that giant of the Victorian plumbing industry, Thomas Crapper & Co.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Companies take existing words and incorporate them into their brands. Likewise, brand names seep into general conversation.

And at a time when technology is becoming a more important part of everyday life, that is likely to happen more frequently. It may not be long before we start YouTubing parts of our lives, Wiki-ing our thoughts, or MySpacing with our friends.

- BLOOMBERG