In the late '90s, dozens of online search engines were vying for attention, offering cute mascots, clever branding and technically distinct solutions for navigating the World Wide Web. As if, when Tim Berners-Lee booted up the web's first page in 1991, he typed the URL into a Google-branded search bar.
Google is so ingrained in online culture that it feels as if it's always been there. 1 site in the world by analytics company Alexa. Google is the default search engine, homepage and online landing pad for people around the globe, ranked as the No. Today, the phrase "Google it" has dethroned any variation of "do an online search," and jokes about misinterpreting the root word fell out of vogue years ago (along with Xander's haircut). It took just eight years for Google Search to become so ubiquitous in Western society that Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English dictionaries officially added it to their rosters as a transitive verb, capitalized or lowercase. Google was established in 1998, and within just four years it debuted as a new and innovative tool on prime-time US television. "It's a search engine," Willow explains, because that's something that had to be done in 2002. Xander replies, jokingly, "Willow, she's 17." Willow, tapping away on a thick white iBook, turns to Buffy and asks, "Have you Googled her yet?" In Buffy's dining room, they search through hard copies of Cassie's medical records and find nothing noteworthy. Buffy, Willow, Xander and the gang are trying to help Cassie, a high school student who cryptically says she's going to die next week. It was 2002, in the fourth episode of the show's seventh and final season. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show on American television to use the word "Google" as a transitive verb.