Google's legal beagles boggle

Google doesn't do any advertising. Aside from meaning that they don't actually need to advertise, as they dominate their market, it also means that they apparently don't have any brilliant, or even just plain smart, marketers on staff. Instead they apparently have a bunch (with the acquisition of YouTube probably a really big bunch) of lawyers looking for something lawyerly to do while they wait for all the copyright infringement suits to roll in.

So the lawyers have decided that to use the term Google as a verb, inappropriately, is "Bad. Very, very bad." What really bothers them is that someone might say that they Googled someone on Yahoo! They prefer that you say you "searched" someone on Yahoo! I guess they'd be happier if you said you "Yahoo!ed" someone.

Obviously nobody in the Google Law department ever studied branding. Do you really think Xerox objects to someone "Xeroxing" on a Canon copier? I am sure that at Canon, they sure as hell wish you would think to "Canon" on a Xerox copier. At least you would equate their name with their product, and would think of them the next time your were thinking of buying a "Canon machine." Here's the basics of branding: Say my name. Think my name. Do my name.

I think recent behavior on the part of Google, including spending $1.6 billion(!) on something they already had (see video.google.com), indicates that they are rapidly approaching the state of being characterized as "more money than brains."