Vennskap News: "Google" challenges Sweden!

Famous "Google.com" is unhappy with Sweden's language!

Sweden wants to "Ungoogle"!

Most people have heard of “Googling” something, but have you ever heard of “ungoogling”?

Google, the search engine and Web service provider, has apparently objected to Sweden’s right to formalize the word “ogooglebar,” or “ungoogleable.” According to the Swedish Language Council, the government agency was pressured by Google to remove it from a list of new words because of copyright concerns.

The Swedish council has made a decision to include “ogooglebar” in their computer language. Swedish computers also have the term “emoji” (an animated symbol used to express emoticons); and “grexit” and “kopimism” (a religious and political ideology focused on freedom of information if I googled it correctly!)

“Ogooglebar” refers to something “impossible to find on the Internet using a search engine,” according to the agency. However,
the Swedish council gave in to the California-based firm’s demand to kill “ogooglebar” this week and removed the word from the list. But the word isn’t dying a quiet death.
“We neither have the time nor the will to pursue the outdrawn process that Google is trying to start,” the council’s president Ann Cederberg said in a harshly worded article posted on the council’s web site, under the headline “Google doesn’t own the language!”

Swedish keyboard

Google representatives in Sweden could not immediately be reached. So who does own the language? According to the Swedes, its users.“If we want ‘ogooglebar’ in the language, we should use it, and it is our usage which determines the meaning, not a multinational company with its means of pressure,” Ms. Cederberg said.A look at the history of ogooglebar’s root word supports her point. The verb “Google” was included on the 2003 list in its Swedish form “googla,” meaning "looking for information" on the Internet. However, like Xerox, Google Inc. is trying to keep its company name from becoming a common word. It wasn’t happy with the definition of ungoogleable. The search giant argued that the definition should refer specifically to Google and demanded a change and a disclaimer noting that Google is a registered trademark.

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In the U.S., the company is in legal questions regarding the argument that “google” as a verb has become so common that it no longer refers to a specific search engine. If Google loses, it could find it hard to protect its trademark, and could face the nightmare scenario of following the same path as extinct or diluted trademarks like “escalator,” “aspirin” and “yo-yo.”

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while Ph.D. students at Stanford University. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998.
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Anything can be “Googled” and information-fact or otherwise is readily available. For instance..
April First is an interesting day for the fun-lover..Asking “Google” for April First history, we find that in sixteenth-century France, the start of the new year was observed on April first.

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It was celebrated in much the same way as it is today with parties and dancing into the late hours of the night.Then in 1562, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, and the
new year fell on January first. There were some people, however, who hadn't heard or didn't believe the change in the date, so they continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April first. Others played tricks on them and called them "April fools." They sent them on a "fool's errand" or tried to make them believe that something false was true.

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But then we can get into fun and games! We might “google up” some mischief: (or find something ogoogleable.Putting salt in the sugar bowl for the next person is not a nice trick to play on a stranger. College students set their clocks an hour behind, so their roommates show up to the wrong class - or not at all.

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The Spaghetti Harvest

On April 1, 1957 the British television news show “Panorama” broadcast a three-minute segment about a "Bumper spaghetti harvest" in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil." The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti."

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Nixon's Farewell

The 1 April 1992 broadcast of National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation revealed that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon Nixon's voice impersonated by comedian Rich Little.

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But sometimes, you have to check for accuracy:..A gas-station was offering a discount on a great gas-price. Apparently, they were advertising “Day-old Gas” at a discount and drivers wanted the attendant to point out which pump contained the advertised special. Perhaps, it would be nice to be able to hit the ogooglebar at times..