Google has won an unlikely battle against Sweden to stop it from making the word “ungoogleable” an official part of the Swedish language.
The Language Council of Sweden had proposed to enter ogooglebar into its national dictionary, but the web giant said it did not want its trademark to be associated with something meaning all searching.
Sweden’s proposed definition had been “impossible to find via web search”, but Google’s lawyers said the definition should refer to Google specifically.
Ann Cederberg, director at the language council, said: “Google asked the Language Council to amend the definition of the word. Today, we instead are deleting the word, marking our displeasure with Google’s attempts to control the language.”
Cederberg refused to concede they had been beaten by Google and said they were not in the business wasting time negotiating with them.
She added Google “has forgotten one thing: language development does not care about brand protection”.
A Google spokesman said: “While Google, like many businesses, takes routine steps to protect our trademarks, we are pleased that users connect the Google name with great search results.”
