Let's Ditch Google (Verb)

I anticipate the day where saying you did a web search is looked weirdly upon. You did... what? You mean you asked AI?

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrEHTd_3vD0

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.

I have no problem with this person choosing to use different language to describe this. But I do have a problem generally with attempts to impose language changes on others (in the case of this post you only see that tendency 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, but that’s far from the only political attempt to control language we’ve seen recently. Let people talk how they want! Langauage is an evolving thing that shouldn’t be controlled by scolds!

Around here "google it" has been replaced by "spørg botten" which means "ask the bot" or "spørg GPT".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.