[Leica] Google and Lots of Other Nouns Have Become Verbs

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

Brian Reid wrote:
>"Google spends a lot of money trying to prevent "google" from being used as
>a verb. Their attorneys believe that the NPR piece mentioned was the first,
>but there were several at that time, including a reference in Sex and the
>City, the first on mainstream television."

Omigawd, yes.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3006486.stm

Reminds me of the time in the '80s when I worked for a few months at a 
Certain Large Software Company which shall be referred to 
euphemistically.  I was documenting new edition of an already  popular 
symbolic code debugger for yet another computer language.  One of my 
cardinal principles as a tech writer is to write plain English, eschewing 
obfuscatory technobabble and geekspeak.  I made the mistake of referring to 
the product by name.  I wrote things like, "...when you press the "R" key, 
CodeCrunch will run the program."

My boss quickly told me that Legal said it was absolutely a no-go, and 
could jeopardize the company's trademark.  I was henceforth instructed, 
commanded, and compelled, now and in perpetuity, to refer to their valuable 
intellectual property as "the Macroswift (TM) CodeCrunch (TM) 
Debugger."  In every single use of the name, except for the title.  At 
which point the size of my manual increased by about 15%, and the nice, 
high Readability Index I had attained plummeted.

The fact that everybody in the software development world already called it 
simply CodeCrunch made no difference.

Oh, and back then I shot with a Leica IIIf.

--Peter