google

play

verb, often capitalized goo·gle \ ˈgü-gəl \

Definition of google

googled; googling play \ˈgü-g(ə-)liŋ\

transitive verb

:to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (someone or something) on the World Wide Web

Examples of google in a Sentence

Then where are they going, if not to Faulkner and Achebe and Naipaul? … To the movies; to television (hours and hours); to Googling obsessively (hours and hours); to blogging and emailing and text messaging … . —Cynthia Ozick, Harper's, April 2007
The Sports Gal and I delayed dinner plans so I could analyze the replays like a police chief. Eventually she realized we weren't leaving the house, so she made herself a sandwich and headed upstairs to Google divorce lawyers. —Bill Simmons, ESPN, 6 Dec. 2004
Have you ever googled yourself, maybe late at night, when nobody else was around? It's OK, you can admit it—everybody does it. —Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News, 17 Apr. 2004

Recent Examples of google from the Web

My in-laws clearly Googled my parents, which is a little odd but ultimately not a huge deal.

— carolyn hax, The Seattle Times, "Future in-laws won’t drop suspicions about Dad," 22 Aug. 2017
My in-laws clearly googled my parents, which is a little odd, but ultimately not a huge deal.

— carolyn hax, Philly.com, "Future in-laws google and judge father of the bride," 22 Aug. 2017
My in-laws clearly Googled my parents, which is a little odd but ultimately not a huge deal.

— carolyn hax, Detroit Free Press, "Future in-laws Google and judge the father of the bride," 21 Aug. 2017
The family googled William Land Service and the first business to pop up was a land clearing business in North Alabama.

— lucy berry, AL.com, "Alabama company in the spotlight after Italian sausage dropped on Florida home," 19 July 2017
FROM PEN: Find Out Why Rachel Lindsay Has Been Googling ‘

— rachel lindsay, PEOPLE.com, "The Bachelorette's Rachel Lindsay: I Cried All Night & Day Before Saying Goodbye to Dean After Hometowns," 18 July 2017
Those are a few of the lessons that can be inferred from an analysis of what cars are most frequently Googled in every state.

— mark phelan, Detroit Free Press, "Buick rules the Plains, and other lessons from car searches on Google," 13 July 2017
Watch Taylor Swift Talk Googling Herself, Which Celebrity’s Closet She’d Raid, and the Bravest Thing She’s Ever Done:

— Vogue, "Will Taylor Swift Host a 4th of July Party This Year?," 3 July 2017
That’s an average of 1.22 million people Googling Kate Middleton this month.

— madeleine luckel, Vogue, "Why Is It That We Rarely Hear Kate Middleton Speak?," 29 June 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'google.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

google vs. googol

The verb google and the noun googol are commonly confused because they have similar pronunciations. Google is the word that is more common to us now, and so it is sometimes mistakenly used as a noun to refer to the number 10¹⁰⁰. That number is a googol, so named by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, who was working with large numbers like 10¹⁰⁰. Google, on the other hand, is the name of a search engine as well as a verb that refers to searching the Internet using the Google search engine. (The search engine’s name was inspired by the number: the founders of Google chose the name to reflect their mission “to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.”) You can remember that the number is spelled googol by remembering that a googol has lots of o’s.

Two related words, googolplex and googleplex, are also commonly confused. A googolplex is the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros; the Googleplex is the Mountain View, California headquarters of Google.