"Google" The Word Of The Decade

The Global Language Monitor said that "Twitter" was the word of 2009. Meanwhile, "unfriend" was the top word of 2009, if you listen to the Oxford American Dictionary. The word of the decade, however, is "Google."

Just to be clear, the selection of "google" by the American Dialect Society, is for the verb, not the company name. The American Dialect Society didn't leave us without a word of the year, though, as they named "tweet" the word of the year. Thus, Twitter manages to garner yet another word of the year award, associated with its service.

Grant Barrett, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and editorial director of the online dictionary Wordnik.com thought "blog" would win:

“Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet.” Barrett said. “I really thought blog would take the honors in the word of the decade category, but more people google than blog, don’t they? Plus, many people think ‘blog’ just sounds ugly. Maybe Google’s trademark lawyers would have preferred it, anyway.”

In reality, much like Xerox and Kleenex, who would have preferred their names not become genericized, Google frowns on its name being used as a generic term for searching the web. Brands tend to lose their value if they become generic terms. However, Google owns so much of the Web, there's little fear of that happening.