There has been a lot of news out Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA over the last couple weeks. The release of Google Goggles, Real-Time Search, and the rumors of the imminent release of the Google phone, the Nexus One, are just a few. In the face of this flurry of tech activity, the story we're talking about today has gone relatively unnoticed, but to people who write for a living, it's a very important release.

Back in September, I wrote this article about the futility of subscription-based online dictionaries. I'd concluded by mentioning the fact that a simple search for a word does about as good a job providing a definition as any online dictionary does. Now, it seems that the folks at Google have to come to roughly the same conclusion.
In short, the search engine we all know and love has released their very own free online dictionary. Like everything they do, Google has built a highly functional product that integrates well with the rest of their services. Type an odd word into a Google Search, and a Google Dictionary result is returned right at the top. [This worked a little before the dictionary was officially released, but it's much more complete now.] Type a word into Google Dictionary, and you are offered not only their stored definitions, but also results from the web. Not to mention some pretty nifty integration with Google Translate using the language drop-down menu.

Seemingly overnight, Google has managed to build an extraordinarily competitive dictionary that many people will use through Google Search without even realizing. The need to click through to another service is greatly reduced. For a good example of the functionality of the service, check out this definition for the word 'bath'. Google seems to have most of the bases well covered: multiple definitions, pronunciation, spelling, common phrases, example sentences, and web results.

The only area in which they're so far lacking is one in which a subscription service like the OED shines: etymology. Any avid OED fan, me included, will tell you that the startlingly complete etymologies are this dictionaries ace in the hole. For scholarly reference on the history of the words, there's no matching it. If Google is ultimately trying to compete with the very best dictionaries out there, it's going to have to get on the ball with some word origins.

But, since it's Google, I can't imagine this addition is too far off. After all, they've already pretty much nailed the dictionary market as far as everyday use is concerned. I certainly wouldn't want to be Dictionary.com right now.

All of us at Paradise Tossed love words. It's something of an obsession for us, and being writers and poets it comes with the territory. We're always on the hunt for very new words, very old words and everything in between.

Like never before, words and their definitions are incredibly easy to access through any number of free, exhaustive sources. So why would anyone, anywhere pay for an online dictionary?

In particular, I'm talking about the Oxford English Dictionary, widely respected as one of the best, if not the best, dictionary of the English language in the world. According to the OED website, the New York Times has called it "the greatest work in dictionary making ever undertaken."

Now I love the OED as much as the next geek. In college, I'd use our library's subscription to peruse the endless etymologies, examples, and sentences of words I'd hardly ever heard of. But it nonetheless baffled me why my school or any other would pay $300 a year or better for access to the OED online. [US$295 is the going rate for an individual yearly subscription; the rates for institutions aren't available to the public.] Libraries already spend astronomical subscription fees for journals, which students actually use for research. I may have been one of the only students to ever use my alma mater's subscription. In four years, I never saw or heard reference to the revered compendium in a single paper or presentation from my peers.

The Internet has a glut of free online dictionaries. Here are just a few examples. Merriam-Webster, the OED's upstart American rival, offers its full catalog of words in an ad-supported version. The creators of Wikipedia have brought us Wiktionary, for the ultimate crowd-sourced definitions. By virtue of its name, Dictionary.com likely receives the most traffic of the bunch. The One Look dictionary provides the curious logophile with a number of ways to look up the same word, each providing different results. In a particularly poignant example, Cambridge University's entire set of dictionaries can also be found online free of charge. And lastly, the favorite of the tech-savvy set, the Urban Dictionary provides a great deal of recent words and idioms that the OED wouldn't dare touch.

All of these dictionary services provide free definitions that, though they may not have the gravitas of the OED, constitute just as helpful a service in scope. This alone would be enough to point out the OED's failing to hold on to its revered position, but there's a bigger point to be made here. The dictionary, even the online dictionary, as an independent entity is a non sequitur in the age of the Internet. The Internet itself is the biggest, most complete, easiest to use dictionary in the history of mankind.

Need a definition, etymology, correct spelling, or usage? Type the word you're looking for into Google or Bing. Search engines will scour the entire Internet for the word, not just limited entries moderated by a small group of people. Any dictionary's services pale in comparison to the power of a simple search engine. Facing this fact, any online or print dictionary is redundant or worse. And a for-pay online dictionary is nothing short of absurd.