Saturday, February 17, 2007

History of the term "fridge-Googling"

You would think it is fairly easy to find the first occurrence of the phrase "fridge-Googling" in reference to the activity of finding recipes using a search engine, more specifically, using Google, by keying in the ingredients you have in your fridge. The name "Google" has only been around since 1998, according to their corporate history page:
http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html

People were no doubt search-engine-cooking before then, only it was fridge-Lycosing, or fridge-Altavista-ing. The term Fridge-Googling is cited by the Guardian in October 2004 in a little snippet about the phenomenon.

However, this Nov. 2005 blog entry talks about the phenomenon, but interestingly does not use the term "fridge-Googling".

Word-Spy cites the use of the word, apart from in the 2004 Guardian text, in a couple of sources from 2006, which is way too late! Can anyone find an early quote than the Guardian one? Who invented the term fridge-Googling? Someone must know!

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