Anyone who’s been following this blog for awhile knows what I’m referring to when I use the term Media Mutt.
It’s somebody who doesn’t belong in the same league as a
Publicity Hound. MMs do silly things like call reporters and ask,
“Can you tell me if you got my news release?”
MMs order TV reporters and camera people to “get out of my lobby immediately or I’ll have you thrown out.” This usually happens when the TV station has caught the MM doing something like selling tainted hamburger, and the reporter wants the MM’s side of the story for tonight’s newscast.
Then there’s this week’s newest MM: Google. The search engine giant has fired off a series of legal letters to the media, warning them against using the word “google” as a verb.
Are they nuts or what? Nobody, not even Google, has enough money to buy that kind of publicity.
What do you suppose Dogpile–the metasearch engine that “fetches” information from places like About.com, Ask.com, MSN and Google–would do if people suddenly started saying, “If you’re looking for information on the benchmark index, just dogpile and see what you find.”
I doubt they’d go running to their legal department. I don’t care what the trademark attorneys say. Telling somebody to “just google the phrase and see what you can find” is the very best kind of PR imaginable.
If my competitors told their followers “Now be a good publicity hound and take a reporter to lunch,” I’d do back flips.
The worst part of this whole mess is the bad publicity that’s
already resulted. The bloggers are yucking it up with each other at the very thought that Google will threaten them–or sue them.
Mirriam-Webster, by the way, has added the verb “google,” with a small g, to its dictionary. So it will be interesting to see how this ends.
Unfortunately, you are just TOTALLY wrong in your Google article. As a tongue in cheek piece it would be great, but most of your readers aren’t informed enough to understand the significant legal issues involved here.
“Google” is a trademark. Legally, trademarks MUST be defended or they can be deemed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to be “in the public domain.” If this occurs, the trademark ceases to be the property of the original owner and anyone can use it at will. That’s not very PR savvy.
Google doesn’t have to actually stop everyone from using its name as a verb, but it does legally HAVE to make attempts to do so.
This was not a choice it made. It was not an option. It was a legal requirement. Legal requirements may not be in tune with PR needs, but they are unavoidable.
Bill McGinnis
Career Strategist & Owner
Exponential Careers
Google is not crazy, they’re likely teetering on the legal edge of pending obscurity. I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding of copyright law is that when a product name like Google becomes so common that people start using it generically, as in “I need to Google a publicity hound,” and Google does nothing to protect that copyright, they lose it.
I believe that Aspirin, once a brand name, lost it’s copyright and became a generic. Other companies like Q-tips, Coke and Xerox faced the same crises and waged similar non-publicity campaigns when the media began interchanging their brand names with the generic products: cotton swabs, cola, and photocopy.
I remember seeing a full page editorial, I think, in the New York Times, where Xerox had to re-educate journalists not to use their name generically when describing the photocopy process. That must have been a bittersweet letter to write.
When it comes to copyright law, obscurity and fame are not a linear trajectory, but circular. If you go too far down the road to fame, you get right back to the beginning. Google is probably at that point, or quickly approaching it. Rather than saying “web search,” people are saying “Google.” I know I do. But if the media does it and Google doesn’t stop them, they risk losing everything.
Chris Kelley
President
Polestar Communications
P.S.: You may want to solicit the opinion of any copyright lawyers on your mailing list to weigh in on this subject.