Google This.

The moment I switched my search engine preferences was well after Google became a verb.  I heard it on a movie—Maid in Manhattan, I think it was: “You can Google it when you get to school.”  I hadn’t heard Google used like that before, and I loved it, so I made the decision to stop using Yahoo! and start using Google for my online researching needs.

Yes, this online-life change came about because the noun had become a verb.  But it’s not the whole “sounding like a hipster” appeal that attracted me; I just always like it when nouns become verbs.  I try and use a noun as a verb on a daily basis—like, “facebook” : “Facebook me tomorrow, Josh, because I’ll be at work.”   That one’s become pretty standard, so sometimes I like to come up with my own.  Take, for instance, the word “crockpot”: “You wanna come over for dinner tomorrow?  I’ll crockpot a chicken.”

The grammarian in me knows using a noun like a verb isn't the best decision (unless someone else is doing it online), but I can’t stop.  I love it.  Essentially, you’re taking power away from what was the noun and giving it to yourself.  It’s not the crockpot that’s doing to work; it’s you, because you’re the one crockpoting.  Same thing with “Googling.”  You don’t “Yahoo” or “Webcrawler,” and even though it contains a verb, “AskJeeves” just doesn’t have the same effect. 

So Google it was, and Google it has been for six years or so.

Thanks to Google, I've been able to slack off in online researching.  Not only will it search the site without me having to actually GO to the site, but it'll fill in the question for me. Now, I used to search by noun phrases, using AND or NOT and quotation marks to get really specific.  Now I just write out the question, as informal as possible, and wait for Google to fill in the rest.  For some reason, this is fascinating--I love typing stuff into the search bar to see if anyone else has asked the same thing.

After Sarah Palin made the comment about being able to see Russian from Alaska, I started wondering if it really WAS possible.  In my defense, it was late and I'm pretty sure I had had a few beers.  The sane and sober part of me knew it wasn't true, but the drunk part just wanted to check.  So I went to Google and typed in "Can you see Russia..." and it was immediately filled in with "...from Alaska."  I was thrilled.  Not only did I find out the answer (no, you can't), but it was satisfying to know that other people were wondering the same thing, that we were all out there Googling together.