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I get the Google Friends newsletter. I thought this was a cute story, but what I found most interesting is the use of “google” as a verb. For a company that doesn’t want its tradename used as a verb, to the point of having its lawyers send cease and desist letters, it certainly seems counterproductive to publish a newsletter that appears to encourage it:

We admit it: we love learning about all the things people use Google to do. Such as … how to find a lost tortoise. Here’s a story we got from Jim Lyness: “After Christmas, my son Sam wanted a turtle. We bought a Russian Tortoise instead, and named him Rocky. Well, one day, we let Rocky out for a stroll around the house. We could not find him that night, and into the following day. After the boys went to school, my wife Susan and I were stumped. Did Rocky get out the front door?
Susan googled [how to find a Russian Tortoise] and bang — we had a game plan. Russian Tortoises like warm, dark spaces. We started in the boys’ bedroom, again. We pulled the bunk bed back and there was Rocky at the head of the bed. Case solved. When we tell friends and family about googling How to Find a Russian Tortoise, they bust a gut in laughter! “

If you have a story about how Google search has made an impact on something on your world, we’d love to hear it. Use either of the links below - either submit your tale through a web form or upload your story on video to YouTube. (If you shoot video, be sure to tag it “google testimonial” when you upload it.)

Web form: http://www.google.com/contact/success.html

As for my success story, I googled “Google sues media for using google as a verb” to find the article I needed for the link in the first paragraph.