Google is losing its verb status

Today, however, this special status has begun to wane.

“So much Google, the verb,” ​​Mark Shmulik and fellow internet analysts at Bernstein Research wrote in a note to investors. “Younger audiences are ‘searching’, not ‘googling'”.

That revelation was a top finding in a new Gen Z study that analysts released Friday. Born in the years 1997 to 2012, this generation was the first to experience their entire lives online, with many going straight to smartphones and apps to access the internet rather than desktop computers and web browsers.

Now Gen Z consumers are growing up and becoming important parts of the economy. They change the way things are done, which will create new winners and losers.

“Gender. “Zers, and especially Gen Alpha, barely use Google as a verb anymore, they just say ‘search,'” Shumlik and colleagues explained. “For those with teenage children, try asking them to find something online and describe what they’re doing as they do it to see what they say.”

Instead, Gen Z often access the TikTok app to see restaurant and hotel recommendations. Or they’ll see a creator they admire releasing a new product that excites them, and they’ll go straight to that brand’s app or website, the analysts explained.

Should Google be worried about this “deverbization,” as analysts say?

He might be worried because when you are no longer a verb, it suggests that you are no longer omnipresent. That’s not so good. Does anyone remember “Do you Yahoo?” from Yahoo? advertising campaign? Probably not. And you probably stopped “Yahooing” in 2005.

But, Google wasn’t actually happy about it becoming a verb at the time. That’s because if your company or product name becomes too ubiquitous, it becomes hard to brand. Look what happened to “aspirin” in the last century. So maybe Google is happy it’s no longer a verb with the young?

I asked Shmulik and this is what he said.

“I feel that being a verb matters in the Internet, given scale/network effects and a technological advantage,” he wrote in an email. “I think if de-verb now is because technology and user behavior have advanced.”