Planet Google

Tuesday on Word of Mouth, we take a look at one of the companies hit hard by yesterday’s tumbling technology stocks: Google. The Internet giant’s shares fell below the $400 mark. That’s a two-year low. In November of last year, a share of Google, Inc cost $750.

Google just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and it’s astounding to look at the company’s first decade. It went from a simple search engine started by two guys in a tiny dorm room to a multinational company with over 16,000 employees. Not only does it dominate 70 percent of the online search market, it’s created many more applications and products, including a new web browser and a cell phone platform.

New York Times columnist Randall Stross just published a book about the rise of the company that one day hopes to be the gatekeeper of all the world’s information. His book is called Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know. He joins us on the show to discuss the company, the principles that guide it, and its impact on our culture.

In 2006, the verb “to google” officially entered our lexicon when it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. The birth of the Internet age has brought about all kinds of new words, known as "neologisms." Words like "blog" or even "broadband" didn’t exist too long ago. Some neologisms can also be existing words that take on new meaning, like the term "spam." Jenny Attiyeh, host and producer of ThoughtCast, visited the "Future of the Internet" conference at Harvard to track down more new words for the digital age. Click here to listen.