Ironically this is a bad thing for Google from a legal standpoint. If a term becomes "genericized" then it can lose trademark protection.

"Aspirin" is a famous example. It used to be a brand name for acetylsalicylic acid medication, but became such a common way to refer to it that in the US any company can now use it.

Apparently the "lost in the Treaty of Versailles" explanation is a bit of a just-so story: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55729/why-did-ba...

I've been using Kagi for the past few years, but I try to use a brand-agnostic language talking about web search; e.g. "I'm gonna search [the web] for it"; "Use your favorite search engine to look it up".

Likewise and if people say, "why don't you google that?" I usually reply (obviously to everyone's annoyance:-) "I don't use Google". The general response is a blank, uncomprehending look.

To a young enough audience, you will sound like you exclusively use ChatGPT instead.

In Italian verbs for foreign words are almost always generated from the first conjugation (-are), which means "to google" is actually "googl-are".

With kagi, one cannot miss the opportunity to generate a similar verb " kag-are", which sounds exactly like "going number 2" (in a relatively rude way), which is what I ironically use every time I decide not to use the generic "search" verb. I consider it one of the minor benefits of being a kagi user!

Yes, it’s like Xerox or Kleenex except it’s actually still a monopoly. In a happy Kagi user but I know hardly anyone else is.

Yeah, I don't feel the need to have conversations go on a tangent about explaining what Kagi is

I used to. Even when I actually used DDG. Now that I use Kagi (and thus am on the second web search service after I stopped using Google) it started to feel silly so I say "search the web" these days.

Yes, but more in the past than now, simply because almost everybody seems to use google itself.

For example I'd hear people say "I'll Google that", then use Yahoo when they were still a major search engine.

nope, i say “i’m going to search for XYZ” or similar

Now my family usually says "I'm going to ask AI."

Nope. I stopped using google for search many years ago, and stopped using it as a verb about the same time.

I admit I've used something like "are you banned on Google or what?" a couple of times though.

I do

yes, me