Looks like Google has some celebrating to do. The American Dialect Society has declared “Google” the word of the decade. The ADS intentionally chose a generic form of the name and defined it to mean to “search the Internet.” So according to them, searcher might use Bing of YAHOO! to “Google” things the same way that allergy sufferers use store-brand Kleenex.
Grant Barrett, chair of the ADS’s New Words Committee, explained in a formal announcement, “Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet.”
ADS also chose “tweet” as 2009’s word of the year.