What is pop culture? Pop culture is a term used for describing what is popular in the society at the time. “Pop” is a shortened use of the word popular. Pop culture tends to be on the opposite end of the spectrum with classical or traditional ways. Pop culture is also used to indicate what we do everyday and extends to our sports, music, entertainment, fashion, cooking, dining, and internet usage. With the internet, pop culture tends to be associated with video sharing, social networking, EBay, classified directories like Craigslist, and “Googling” on the famous search engine Google. Just how does pop culture relate to this verb “Googling?” Let’s look at a few ways:
Pop culture includes Googling your own name to get an idea of your image. Go to the Google search engine and try this some time: Type in your name or the name of your website and see what comes back. It is a good way to see how popular you or your brand is. For example, say you have a band and you are marketing albums on the internet. You can have a Googling session on your band name and see who is out there promoting you. Not sure who someone is? Go Googling on their name and see what returns.
The pop culture term “Googling” is not popular with the Google search engine. There is a gray area between the company Google and the use of the verb “Googling.” Google’s lawyers are concerned that googling will become a household word and the tie between the verb googling and the trademark name Google will become blurred. Google has been on patrol looking for those using it as a verb without associating it with the search engine. In other words, if you use the phrase, “I googled for a job at IBM” it would raise the eyebrows of Google’s lawyers. More acceptable would be to use the phrase “I went to Google and googled for a job at IBM.” In the latter example, the Google trademark name was still mentioned. The search engine is okay with that.
Googling used in movies and on television. This is because it is becoming such a part of the pop culture. When people need to search, they go to the search engine and go Googling. This is probably one of the reasons why the search engine has such a large portion of the market share and it is because none of the other search engines get mentioned like this. For example, if an actor in a television show used “Googling” and “Yahooing,” which term do you think the pop culture would recognize first?
Google Earth is a popular form of Googling among the pop culture. Today’s pop culture is curious about everything. Want to know what the back yard of your favorite movie star looks like? Download Google Earth, go Googling for the movie star’s address, and zoom in with Google earth from there.
Googling for new words is done by the pop culture quite often. Have you heard some slang phrase or word that you never heard before? Go to Google and type the phrase in. It will quickly list the other websites using it. In fact, there are even websites dedicated to listing and defining all of the new pop culture terms as they become known.
Tags: pop culture, search engines
