Ogooglebar

“Google has namely forgot[sic] one thing: language development do[sic] not care about brand protection. No individual can decide about the language."

In this statement by the Language Council of Sweden, there is clearly a divide between corporate culture and the development of language. Ask a linguistics scholar and they will tell you that language is ever-developing (for example, the phrase "an apron" centuries ago was actually said as "a napron"). Even within the last few years, technology has changed the use "like," "unfriend," "tag," and "tweet" due to social media and people internationally becoming more connected via these platforms. However, I have not seen Twitter or Facebook object to its terms' use in the lexicon, perhaps because the use of their terms shows its saturation in society, and therefore, its popularity; it gives them more exposure, so they keep their mouths silent.

Google recently demanded that Sweden remove the term "ungoogleable," or in their vernacular, "ogooglebar," from its official list of Swedish words, citing that the term should reflect Google searches in general and not the lack of being able to find content using the search engine.

This reminds me immediately of Google wanting to be the omniscient source of all information and that the idea of not being able to find something on Google is absurd and impossible. Nice ego, Google. I can only imagine how this will affect others' views of Americans further in our rampant capitalism.

Imagine if all search engines or corporations, for that matter, had this philosophy. Though, maybe it would be best for society to not discuss corporate products (e.g. "I love cherry Coke") since life would be less materialistic. Who knows.

To avoid using Google and giving it more exposure (more than it has already through news sources and in posts like these, and its link with Blogger.com), I opted to take my own photo for this post, which is above.