Saying 'Google It' Makes You Sound Old | Hacker News Reader

Saying 'Google It' Makes You Sound Old

nytimes.com

20 pointsbookofjoe41 comments

I agree, that's why I keep it fresh with the kiddos by using the more hep "give it to Ask Jeeves" or "run it through gopher".

But since I also like to quack it with Duck Duck Go, daddy-o, I sometimes just say " I used a search engine..."

The local young person here likes to say, "search it up!" Which I find amusing for reasons not completely understood. Either way, better than giving free advertising to a multinational spying firm.

Yes, this is the term my youngins use too!

Yeah, I used to Google things until Google went to shit. Now I use Kagi, but it doesn't sound like a verb. I'll gladly add "search [it] up" to my lexicon :)

The term 'google' does a good job of saying 'internet search' with far fewer letters, and with much more uniqueness. That alone helped in the battle with 'Dog Pile' and Alta Vista.

I've never got into turning business names into verbs, and I am from the generation that heavily used "Google it".

Nowadays, I have colleagues suggest to "Ask Claude/ChatGPT". I want to collaborate and build on the team experience, not ask a system that can hallucinate an answer!

"We hallucinate our answers exclusively in-house, go to the office fridge and grab some shrooms"

Can you give an example of a question that you would google, but your colleagues would "Ask Claude" and they get a hallucination but you get the right answer?

Pretty much anything to do with transportation routes — it keeps telling me to take a non-existent train line, or a bus that isn’t on the schedule it thinks, or something like that.

Ironically: Claude Code docs

Tends to latch onto whatever was true at the time of its training run unless you point it to the llm.txt.

Probably most people don't Xerox things or Fotomat pictures, but still ask for a Kleenex, or use a Thermos, Band-aid, Flip-phone, Chapstick or Post-it

I just skip the middle men at this point and tell people “open up your third eye”

Start the reactor, free Mars.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/magazine/google-it-search...

This is called antonomasia.

edit: is someone at meta/openai trying to age-shame me for using it?

I need to tell my IRC friends ASAP.

Thank god. Verbing corporate nouns needs to die.

I quietly like it because it erodes a company's ability to strong-arm via trademarks if it's part of common parlance.

Maybe "google it" can refer to the uglified nature of English usage by conflating an activity with a morally ambiguous entity who eventually and inevitably enshittifies it.

So yeah, it got Googled.

Zip it!

The propaganda against Google Gemini is wild, but no thanks. We know how this will play out soon.

All you have to do is say you're going to "Bing it" and everyone in the room laughs.

Didn't ask, don't care.

Funnily enough, I was considering writing a blog post on this very subject yesterday - none of my kids ever mentions Google at all, and even their friends who have Android phones use "search it up".

After cutting your finger do you ask for a bandaid or an Adhesive Medical Strip? There's a benefit to turning company names into Nouns or Verbs

150 years ago, I may have asked for a bandage or first aid. Perhaps those terms helped give an idea to the marketing team.

Being more accustomed to medical terms now, sometimes I call it a “dressing” which is also two syllables.

“Adhesive Medical Strip” sounds one of those database categories someone invented for a store or clinic, once Band-Aid had competitors.

https://archive.is/Ucaxb No paywall

That's piracy.

Yep! <3

I've never heard of "Google it". I've only ever said "Input it to a web search engine".

Alta Vista It

I tiktok it. Its not true unless a random person reads it out loud to a cell phone.

"google it" does have delicious ironic potential starting, now.

RTFM

RAFB

In Finnish there is an acronym KVG (katso vittu Googlesta) which stands roughly for Look up on the fucking Google. I wonder what will replace it in the age of LLMs

Duck it

And?

I still say "Google it", but I don't use Google for search anymore -- haven't for almost two years, ever since I started subscribing to Kagi. If you're busting my ass about how I use "Google" as a verb, and you're still actually using Google to search, you can help yourself to a heaping serving of Shut The ** Up.

lmgtfy

"ask Jeeves"

how about saying AI it

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