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The phrase Google Tree appears in St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks from 1898 (starting on p. 35, or p. 49 of the pdf file):

enter image description here

Both madly loved the Lily Maid,
And better to decoy
The other from her, each reviled The little Tailor Boy;
And vowed a most tremendous vow, By the great Google Tree,
Next matinee they would him slay,
And so revenged be.

Google Tree doesn't appear anywhere else in the book mentioned above.

I've found contemporary usage for Google Tree, but obviously, this wouldn't apply to the past:

Google Tree is a life-sized fabricated tree plucked from the ubiquitous software Google Earth. Not quite a replica, the tree is a copy of a copy—a physical experience created from an unreliable digital proxy. - bitforms.art

Could it be used adjectively? Google is another form of the adjective goggle meaning "Of the eye: Protuberant, prominent, full and rolling; also, ?squinting." per the OED.

Could it be a typo/misprint, an invention, or perhaps a hidden message from time-traveling Google founders?


Note: The author also used other real things, places, and terms (mostly Dutch-related) in the poem that might seem invented but actually aren't. For example:

Mynheer Jan van der Swannigan,
Of high descent was he;
His father peddled pepper-pots
Along the Zuyder Zee.

And Zuyder Zee is defined in Wikipedia as:

The Zuiderzee or Zuider Zee (Dutch: [?z?yd?r?ze?]; old spelling Zuyderzee or Zuyder Zee), historically called Lake Almere and Lake Flevo, was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands.

Thus Google Tree might be something real also.

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  • Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on English Language & Usage Meta, or in English Language & Usage Chat. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.
    – tchrist
    Commented Feb 15 at 17:46
  • Did you look into the guggul tree? Commented Feb 16 at 20:09
  • @TinfoilHat I've never heard of that tree before, but it doesn't seem related, especially given its geographical distribution, and it doesn't look "great".
    – ermanen
    Commented Feb 17 at 7:53
  • Yes, it’s a stretch. I made a path from dime museums and fire-eating fakirs to myrrh (guggul) from Indonesia aka the Dutch East Indies. (My imagination acts up now and then.) Commented Feb 17 at 15:07
  • @TinfoilHat I think the stereoscope theory is highly plausible, and I would appreciate it if you could post an answer when you can. Feel free to include your other guesses at the end.
    – ermanen
    Commented Feb 17 at 17:37

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