A Trip To The Search Engine Graveyard

Hey Google, whatever happened to Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, AltaVista, and all those other search engines?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show on American television to use the word “Google” as a transitive verb. It was 2002, in the fourth episode of the show’s seventh and final season. 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. In Buffy’s dining room, they search through hard copies of Cassie’s medical records and find nothing noteworthy.

Willow, tapping away on a thick white iBook, turns to Buffy and asks, “Have you Googled her yet?”

Xander replies, jokingly, “Willow, she’s 17.”

“It’s a search engine,” Willow explains, because that’s something that had to be done in 2002. Read more >