Appendix 2. Examples of the broader cultural significance of Google.

• Like Kleenex, Band-aid, Xerox, and FedEx, Google has achieved the ultimate state of brand penetration—it is a word not just for itself but for a general class of phenomena. "Google" is now an established English verb with wide usage (see, e.g., WordSpy. The verb "google" was voted unanimously the "most useful" word for 2002 by the American Dialect Society, and linguists seriously discuss whether or not it should be capitalized.
• People now regularly Google themselves (although they may not admit it). Sometimes called "self-googling", this has been promoted semi-seriously as a way of assessing your place in the world, or at least your impact on the Web; "Meditation is so analog."(C. Kaye, Esquire, 2003-09-01). Some people speak of their "google number"—the number of pages that come up when they enter their own name. Consultants advise their clients to increasing their personal "Google visibility" as a means to better business and job hunting ( 2004-05-04).
• Googling is also now the regular way for checking on prospective employers, employees, professors, and (most titillatingly) dates and ex-significant others. "Google-dating" was famously exemplified on the TV show "Sex and the City" when one of the characters "Googles" her date before going out with him.
• Google has been said to be a de facto arbiter of validity on the Internet, since it ranks Websites mainly by the number of other sites that are linked to them. "Google essentially determines what exists on the Internet and what doesn’t," says Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain (D. LaGesse, US News and World Report, 2004-05-10). "If you’re not indexed by Google, you pretty much don’t exist" (S. Levy, Newsweek, 2004-03-29).
• "Googleshare" is a measure of the proportional "ownership" or significance of a person or entity with respect to a particular subject or term. Search for a term, then search within those results for another term; divide the number of results for the second term by the number for the first; the result is the Googleshare. Example: "Turritella" - 8130 results (see below); "Allmon" within Turritella - 52 results. Allmon’s Googleshare of Turritella = 0.0064. (By way of comparison: Charles Darwin’s Googleshare of "evolution" is 0.0470, Steve Gould’s is 0.0120, and Ernst Mayr’s is 0.0022; Britney Spears’ Googleshare of "music" is 0.0097, and Beethoven’s is 0.0057.) The suggestion has already been made to use this technique in a manner analogous with the Science Citation Index: what, for example is the Googleshare of "physics" by the MIT Physics Department?
• "Googlebombing" has become well-known during the recent election season. Googlebombs are techniques used to get certain Web sites listed higher for specific queries than they otherwise would be. In September, for example, the biography of President Bush came up first when you typed in "miserable failure", while John Kerry’s official campaign site came up first for "waffles".
•  In a now-famous New Yorker cartoon (2002-10-28), two middle aged men stand next to each other at a bar. One looks at the other with a bewildered expression and says "I can’t explain it—it’s just a funny feeling that I’m being Googled".