methodologies of Professor Chiou.71 Therefore, to conduct a survey or interview with no knowledge of the litigation would be impossible as it is a subject of this research. This is why different methods of research are carried out to make up for this disadvantage in order to reach a result that is as objective as possible. Two focus groups of different ages are carried out as qualitative research to better understand the actual recognition of the consuming public of the Google search engine. An online survey is analyzed as quantitative research. Both are designed for the purpose of discussing whether the Google trademark should have been rendered generic.
A. Focus Group on Usage of “Google”
Two focus groups were conducted to better understand people’s recognition of the Google trademark during the time of the lawsuit and today. One focus group is consisted of people who are considered generation X, they are people who were born between after the 1960s to the early 1980s72; the other focus group is consisted of people who are considered generation Y, they are people who were born between the 1980s to the early 2000s.73 People recruited for generation X are elementary school teachers while people recruited for generation Y are students in business schools. In regard to limited budget for research, elementary school teachers were recruited instead of business professionals or lawyers for generation X focus groups, the latter would be a more accurate comparison of the recruited group of generation Y. Considering elementary school teachers and business professionals or lawyers are both categories of people who have been educated and are familiar with use of search engines, it is assumed that
elementary school teachers can still provide insight to the recognition towards search engines among generation X.
This segregation is meant to integrate the recognition of the consuming public towards the Google trademark during the time of its lawsuit with Elliot and of today. As Google
registered for their trademark in 2004 and the lawsuit of Google v. Elliot happened from 2012 to 2014, generation X and generation Y would represent a huge part of the Google search engine’s consuming public. Generation Z, people who would be approximately one to fourteen years old then, are excluded because they have overlapped to times which other strong browsers like Baidu or Bing have started to rise and they would not contribute as significantly to the recognition of the majority of Google’s consuming public. Baidu was first launched in Beijing China in 2000.74 This overlap would have potential to dilute the recognition of Google as the only strong browser because today Baidu and Google are the two strongest browsers with the most market share in
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the world with Google at approximately 74 percent and Baidu at approximately 11 percent.75 Not to mention that Baidu browser is vigorously educating its users to see “Baidu” as a verb for searching for information online as the search button on Baidu webpage says “Baidu it”.76 The goal to the qualitative research of these two focus groups is to find out whether the assertion of Elliot and Gillespie was wrong, and whether they could have won the lawsuit if they surveyed on the grounds that the Google trademark made people refer to browsers as a noun.
To elaborate on the qualitative research of focus groups, this research method is mostly used in the alterations of design in a product’s concept or its marketing strategies.77 It is mainly used to find out the attitude, belief, motive for demand, and actions towards the product.
Therefore, this kind of qualitative research is very suitable for this dissertation as I aim to find out the real usage of the Google trademark in the eyes of its consuming public. The analysis will focus on findings related to the belief and actions of the consuming public as the primary
significance test should indicate whether a trademark should become generic.78 The research and judgement in the case of Google v. Elliot only explains that the consuming public uses it as a verb. However, there has been no research or explanation as to whether it is also referred to as a noun.
a. Focus Group Questions
There are ten questions in this focus group which are divided into three segments. The first segment aims to find out people’s need of search engines in their daily lives and also to ease up the atmosphere of the focus group so people would be willing to provide further information about their feelings and beliefs. The second segment aims to find out people’s recognition and opinions towards search engines in general. Finally, the last part aims to find out what the Google trademark is to the participants.
The first three questions are “Are you passionate about learning? Why?”, “When you hear something that you did not know about, what would you do?” and “When you realize you have encountered unknown knowledge, what would you do?”. The first question serves mainly as a warm up and as an introductory question to the topic of this focus group. The second question is a narrower scenario while the third covers a larger scope. People have various ways of discovering answers for their questions and we can also find out the comparison of reliance on search engines between two generations in this part.
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The second part which inquires about people’s recognition of search engines in general consists of the questions “Please draw what comes to mind when the phrase ‘search engine’
comes to mind.”, “What search engines have you used before?”, “Please share your best and worst experience upon using search engines.”, and “Which search engine do you use most often now and why?”. The purpose of asking people to draw out what they think intuitively when hearing the phrase “search engine” is one of the most important questions in research of this focus group because it provides support as to whether people automatically think of Google when the phrase “search engine” is mentioned. Therefore, it is referred to as a noun instead of a verb. The fifth question has to do with understanding which search engines interviewees are familiar with, and it also acts as a warm up question for the last part. It brings out the fact that Google is the first search engine people tend to think about when the topic of search engines is mentioned. The sixth and seventh question brings insight for why people are so attached to Google, making it the most used search engine today.
The last part of this focus group consists of the questions “What comes to mind when you see the Google trademark?”, “Have you ever used the phrase ‘Google it’? Under what
circumstances?” and “Will you also use the phrase ‘Google it’ to describe the action of looking up information when you are searching on browsers that are not Google?”. The eighth question uncovers the most direct things Google is and is related to in the eyes of part of the consuming public. The seventh question confirms the judgment of the court for Elliott v. Google, Inc. ’s case and paves the premise for our last question. The last question confirms whether Google should have been rendered generic as a noun because if the answer to this question is positive then it means users see all browsers as Google.
b. Focus Group A: Generation Y
The first focus group is consisted of people aged between 20 and 30 who study in College of Commerce at National ChengChi University. This focus group was carried out on May 7th, 2019 in which eight participants joined the research. The participants came from the institutions of “International Business” and “Technology, Innovation and Intellectual Property
Management”, so their common background would be business. The notes of this focus group can be found in [Index One].
i. Part One
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The analysis for the first part of Generation Y’s focus group is organized into three parts:
How people of generation X look for answers to their questions, their tendency of creating new terms, what kind of information attracts them, and their recognition of knowledge. The former two will be discussed in this section while the latter two will be discussed later in the fourth section as it has a lot to do with consumer belief and the marketing of the Google search engine along with its trademark.
Regarding how participants look up information, they generally search for answers by
“Googling it”, observing and puzzle piecing, asking experts, asking friends on social media, asking the people relevant to the topic, or giving known information in order to coax more
relevant knowledge from others. Whichever method it is used to look for answers, the unanimous and most intuitive answer for participants is “Google it”. This shows a certain degree of reliance on the Google search engine and the confirmation of the use of the term “Google” as a verb for
“searching for information online” as mentioned in the judgment of Elliott v. Google, Inc.
Language is ever evolving in our society as is proved in this focus group. Participant A studying in the Institute of International Business replied the following content upon answering my first question: “I like learning new things and I look up all sorts of things. It’s just that I don’t spend a lot of time ‘Goo-ing’ to do deep research about things.” The phrase “Goo-ing” is
supposedly derived from “Googling”. Just as Oxford Dictionary decided to add the word “selfie”
into its dictionary as a new word79. “Goo-ing” might be a new word in the making and this is also a similar process trademarks go through before becoming generic. The tendency of creating new words to make communication faster and more efficient is a more evident characteristic in some members of Generation Y, which pushes the evolution of language and enhances the risk of trademark genericide.
ii. Part Two
This part aims to discover more about the participants’ recognition towards search engines, it also provides insight for how Google became the most popular search engine among our participants. When being asked to draw what they think upon hearing the phrase “Search engine”, five out of eight people drew the main page of Google search80 with the Google trademark on them as is shown in [Index Two]. The other three drew elements that resembled parts of search engines including search bars, pages of search results and key words. When
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participants were asked which search engines they used, their first answer was Google. Then came other answers like “Yahoo!”, “Bing”, “Baidu”, “search bars in e-commerce apps”,
“databases”, “Wikipedia”, and “Siri”. To clarify on the participants’ answers, the definition of
“search engine” according to the Oxford Dictionary would be: “A program that searches for and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user, used especially for finding particular sites on the World Wide Web.”81 Therefore, some
participants’ recognition of search engines would be incorrect, for example the search bars in e-commerce apps might not count as a search engine because it is not accessing the World Wide Web. However, whether their answers are correct and in line with the definition of “search engine” is not the focus of our discussion in this dissertation, instead their recognition is. It is evident that there is a clear recognition of Google being the most recognized search engine among participants. The questions “Describe your best and worst experience when using search engines.” and “Which is your favorite search engine? Why?” uncovers a few reasons why Google can be widely recognized today and will be discussed in further detail in section four.
iii. Part Three
As the judgment of Elliott v. Google, Inc. has ruled in favor of Google because it is used as a verb instead of a noun. However, the plaintiffs did not try to further prove that Google was recognized as a noun. Therefore, in this part I have tried to find the actual recognition of the word “Google” in the eyes of the consuming public. The eighth question is “What comes to mind when you see the Google trademark?” The first answer upon finishing this question was “search engine”. Other answers included “tech giant”, “tech feel”, “stable server”, and “daily tool”. The answers “search engine”, “stable server” and “daily tool” are implications of seeing Google as a server in this question. The ninth question inquires the scenario in which participants would use the phrase “Google it” and there were only two answers received, confirming the judgment of Elliott v. Google, Inc. ’s case still applies to this day. The word “Google” has a meaning of
“searching for information online”, and the two answers were “When I am too lazy to explain.”
and “When looking for information online.” They both imply the action of searching for information online.
The tenth question asks participants whether they would still use the phrase “Google it”
even if they are looking up information on search engines that are not Google. Four people
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answered this question and three of them said that they would say “I was looking for
information.” or “I looked it up on a browser.” to describe their actions. However, one person said that if the timeframe has been prolonged to one month for example, then she might say that she Googled the information out of conscience. There is still room for controversy as to whether Google was seen as a noun by the whole consuming public, but it is proved that there are people who see the word “Google” with the definition of “browser”. This does not conflict with also recognizing the word as a verb for “looking up information” because there are many words in English that take the same form whether it is a verb or a noun, and implies the verb function of the noun, like the word “record”. Maybe becoming a verb and a noun is what the trademark
“Google” should have become if the plaintiff’s arguments pursued the direction of making Google a noun in the judgment of Elliott v. Google, Inc. ’s case.
iv. Consumer Belief towards Google
After asking how they search for answers in the first section, I continued pursuing the answers for this question by asking what type of information attracts them. Their answers included things that were related to their labeled profession, required knowledge academically, things that would cause them to feel interested, surprising events, and things relevant to their own lives during the present and in the assumed future. These answers have a lot to do with why Google is so attractive and inevitable in people’s lives nowadays.
Upon describing their best and worst experiences of using different browsers in the second section of my focus group, all the participants followed our animal instinct to remember the bad experiences better than the good ones and described their bad experiences first.82 The interesting thing was that they had nothing bad to say directly about Google when I pressed on about their bad experiences. Their answers will be explained by the FAB structure83 of C1
analysis as this considers consumers’ user experience towards the use of Google and other search engines.
(i) Feature
It is quite straightforward what the consumers expect regarding the features of search engines. When one uses search engines, they hope to find the information they need. When participants mentioned the bad experiences they had upon using different search engines, it all
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had to do with not finding information they need. The answers included “leading to fishing sites”, “numerous pop up ads can be very distracting”, “errors occurring at websites”, and
“content farms showing up”. These answers all have one thing in common and it is not being able to find wanted information or obstacles along the way to finding it. When they spoke of the good experiences of using search engines, they mentioned that they have seen improvement in Google searches and unwanted information is filtered out better than it was in the past.
Furthermore, they appreciate that Google suggests the words that you might be looking for and is able to provide more accurate answers with very little information. For example, a participant said that she was looking for a movie she watched when she was a little girl but she could not remember the name, just some details of it. So she typed out the parts she remembered into the search bar of Google and she was able to find what she was looking for immediately.
For question seven: “Which search engine do you use the most? Why?” Participants all answered Google also for their features. One participant mentioned the sub-search engines Google has, including “Google scholar”, “Google patent” and so on, this can be very helpful for academic research. These answers conclude that as far as our participants know, Google search engine is able to provide the best features compared to other search engines.
(ii) Advantage
Discussing further on question seven, the reason why Google is the most popular search engine also includes the advantages it brings for consumers. This brings in the comparison of the Google search engine and the Yahoo search engine. Most of our participants have used both.
One participant mentioned that the main page of Yahoo contains too many different topics and content, which can be very distracting and often tempts her to browse through content she did not intent to in the first place. This would be a disadvantage to her because she says that it resulted in a waste of her time and it often makes her forget what she wanted to do in the first place. Another one of our participants also mentioned that he likes the clean main page of Google as well because the simplicity makes him feel more comfortable. This reaction is consistent with one of Larry and Sergey’s original goals of design in 1999 for Google to appear simple and clean. The front page of web search back them was also crammed with information and became a headache for people trying to focus on things they wanted to look up.84
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Besides the advantage of Google’s main page, one participant mentioned that Google search engine’s capability of picking out key words helps her find information faster. Therefore, to conclude on this part, the advantages that Google search engine brings for the participants include saving time, finding answers, and having a comfortable feeling along the way.
(iii) Benefit
The benefit of a product refers to the psychological reward a consumer receives after using the product. This then becomes the benefit of a brand or in other words, the feeling consumers buy when they purchase products with that trademark on them. The Google search
The benefit of a product refers to the psychological reward a consumer receives after using the product. This then becomes the benefit of a brand or in other words, the feeling consumers buy when they purchase products with that trademark on them. The Google search