Google’s recent move to break off the parts of the company that are a bit more experimental in nature (like the ones trying to make sure that people never die) and house those parts under a new corporate umbrella called Alphabet has drawn quite a bit of commentary, much of it focusing on Google’s corporate strategy, brand value, or vision for its own future. Less discussed, until this New York Times article, is how this move impacts Google’s years-long struggle to try to keep its trademarked name from lapsing fully into the realm of genericization – from “Use that Google website!” to “Just google it.”
Companies hate when this happens – when their trademark becomes obsolete as a result of their very popularity and omnipresence. This is for two reasons, one practical, one legal. Practically, how frustrating must it be for a company to see and hear people use its name, which it has both created and then legally protected, in reference to other products? The Times article has a terrific list of examples of products that, while they are still technically trademarked, have entered our vocabulary as general nouns and concepts. Do you ever ask for a Tylenol when what you really want is an Advil (notably, my Microsoft Word just automatically capitalized Tylenol for me – an example of the reach of trademark protection)? Ever buy a box of the “generic Band-Aids” at Duane Reade? Guess what, there is no such thing as a generic Band-Aid – there are generic bandages, or there are Band-Aids. It’s a trademark. Google is moving into this territory, as people might on occasion “run a Google search” by typing some words into Bing.
Legally, once this goes too far, a company can actually entirely lose its legal trademark, which has happened to quite a few formerly capitalized brand names. If you’re headed to the beach and decide you need a thermos, well guess what, you better buy a Thermos-brand thermos, because that used to be a protected trademark and is now just a normal old word. Same with, almost unbelievably, cellophane, which began its life as a trademark. And heroin, which was originally Heroin and was owned by the pharmaceutical giant Bayer. The process by which this occurs is called genericization. It becomes a formal legal fact, typically, when another company uses an allegedly genericized name, the original trademark holder sues, and the usurping company argues that the word has simply become too commonly used to be a trademark.
Google is terrified of this, and they should be. Google has been in dictionaries since 2006. It has become ubiquitious. By more closely defining their brand, and by removing the “Google” label from some of their other ventures, the company probably hopes to consolidate its brand and trademark value so it closely aligns with very specific, web-based products. Will it work? Who knows – one thing Google does have going for it is that when people use a lower-case google, they are usually referring to Google itself. How many Bing freaks do you know?
Where creative minds come together
One more quasi-related note that has been of personal interest: why has Google been so, so resistant to the now ubiquitous use of the term “Gchat” to describe its Gmail-based instant messaging service, technically called “Google Talk”? In part, because they don’t own the trademark, but also because they want to keep that capital-G Google name attached to it. “G” Chat simply doesn’t have the brand cache.
