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Comment by alecbenzer | Hacker News Reader

I've never heard an email sent via Gmail referred to as a "Gmail" before.

It's a common thing to happen and I've noticed it a lot with middle age non tech crowds. It's not a new phenomenon overall but people talk about how their son made a YouTube or they sent a Gmail quite regularly. For some reason tech folks find it natural to use the verbs (e.g. I googled/youtubed it) but not the nouns.

It doesn't always require the service have 100% market dominance either, just that it be popular enough people hear others use it and commonly used in exclusivity by the user.

This must be a local thing. I've never heard "gmail" used as a verb, ever, by any one of any age.

It's not really a local speech pattern thing it has more to do with associating <product name> with <name of tool>. If you can think of examples for a dozen other traditional products (kleenex, ketchup, jello, aspirin..) it shouldn't be hard to imagine that people do it for gmail and technology products/services. It's also certainly not unheard of though it is still less popular than traditional "emailed" https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=h...

That's a different part of speech.

No one says they're going to "Kleenex their nose" or "aspirin their headache" so why would they "gmail their friend"?

For the same reason they "email my friend" but don't "tissue my nose" or "drug their head". If it doesn't sound right to start with it won't sound right after you swap the generic term for the brand name.

You've at least heard someone say "let me Google that" or "that's photoshopped" right?

ketchup? ketchup is the generic term, no?

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