By Daniel Munoz
Publication Date: 2026-04-15 09:05:00
April 15, 2026, 5:05 a.m. ET
This story is part of the Iconic Brands series, a USA TODAY network project showcasing the companies and brands that helped shape the nation’s identity, economy and culture. The series celebrates American ingenuity with a deeply reported examination of how brands intersect with history, community and everyday life in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. Find more athttps://usatoday.com/usa250/iconic-brands
For years, Google has achieved one of the rarest feats of marketing — making its product a verb.
You don’t just look something up. You Google it.
“When it started, it was built on a premise that seemed ridiculous at the time, which was basically to capture the whole web on these servers at Stanford University and then do this mathematical voodoo to figure out which sites were the best answers to search queries,” said Steven Levy, a longtime tech journalist and author of the book “How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.”
