Google’s billion dollar brand in peril?

January 6, 2006 What do the words heroin, aspirin, windsurfer, trampoline, nylon, escalator, biro, gramophone, thermos, kerosene, laser, linoleum and frisbee all have in common? They all began life as proprietary brand names but lost their registered trademark protection because they became so successful that they drifted into common usage and became generic. Dr Max Sutherland discusses the problems of generitization and the implications for Google – a brand that inside a decade has become so hyper-successful that it is now used as a verb in every language.

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