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

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
Langer added that the list of students the plaintiffs found was discovered just by Googling two names, raising the possibility that the personal information of other former Miami-Dade students is also available online.

— kyra gurney, miamiherald, "Students sue Miami-Dade school district after Social Security numbers posted online", 21 June 2017
His exploring and Googling led him to St. Nektarios.

— tim funk, charlotteobserver, "The photo that lost radio’s ‘Bible Answer Man’ thousands of listeners", 2 June 2017
Or at least run a ticker at the bottom of the screen with some underpaid intern just Googling the number Trump was pulling out of his ass.

— senator al franken, The Hive, "Al Franken Tells You What He Really Thinks About Donald Trump’s Lying", 30 May 2017
RELATED VIDEO: Find Out Why Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay Has Been Googling ‘

— lindy segal, PEOPLE.com, "The Bachelorette's Rachel Lindsay on What Looks She Finds Sexy, the Key to Wearing a Crop Top and More", 29 May 2017
Why Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay Has Been Googling ‘

— lindy segal, PEOPLE.com, "The Bachelorette's Rachel Lindsay on What Looks She Finds Sexy, the Key to Wearing a Crop Top and More", 29 May 2017
Since acquiring a smartphone, Mr. Neti couldn’t stop Googling things: the gods, Hindu and tribal; the relative merits of the Yadav caste and the Gonds; the real story of how the earth was made.

— ellen barry, New York Times, "No, Google’s Not a Bird: Bringing the Internet to Rural India", 21 May 2017
Many — including Bridges himself — expressed surprise that no one had Googled him.

— bethany barnes, OregonLive.com, "After nine months and 20 public records battles, Portland Public Schools hires new top lawyer", 19 May 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.