We also have a lot of vowel fronting, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English#Fronting_of_.2F.C9.91.2F

Thanks for that! Languages and the evolution thereof is such an interesting topic.

Mmmm very different for me, as Fog, Dog, Log, Bog, Flog, Clog, Hog, Jog all rhyme with GOG.

Dog and log have a different vowel than the rest.

Well the two examples you linked have audibly different vowel sounds for me, but I think bing may be using geolocation to serve me with BrE pronunciations where I'm guessing it gave you AmE? For what it's worth, when I think of the common AmE pronunciations of fog and gawp, they sound like fahg and gahp to me, so...

I can't think of a better way to demonstrate the difference than to post a recording, so here's me saying the following:
fog, dog, gog
hawk, gawp, gawg
gog, gawg, gog, gawg

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14P-CGbv7p9CadFfE0Gk6x_RA49GrmB2I

The first two lines demonstrate the two vowel sounds, putting them with other words that use that sound while the third is just an A/B comparison of the two being used to pronounce GOG.

Rhymes with fog

Also relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger

Aha, that's very relevant. When I read gawg it has the same vowel as thought and when I read gog it has the same vowel as lot. Of course the same could be said for the OP, although I imagine in their case all four would have the same vowel sound.

Am I misremembering gog adding that green/yellow logo, or has it always had that?

For the thread, I pronounce it like bog (slightly different from dog). This despite the company pronouncing itself G O G.

For those who don't know, an initialism is taking the first letters of something and then pronouncing each letter, like G O G, or F B I, or the U N, U S, or U K. Meanwhile, an acronym takes the first letters, and then these letters form what looks like a new word and is pronounced as such, like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is pronounced like a word... nah-suh, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is pronounced fee-muh. Since the letters g o g form what looks like a word, I pronounce it as an acronym: gahg.

On a personal level, I dislike words overlapping as homophones, especially when a different pronunciation is unused. So even though the creator of gifs says it's pronounced jif, here in the US we have a well known peanut butter brand called JIF, and since there's nothing using the sound of gif, like gift, I favor the gif over jif pronunciation.

When I was young I grew up thinking cache was pronounced cah-shay, like sashay, and was disappointed to learn it was cash. I still think it should be cah-shay, since cash is already an extremely common term for money. A cache of cash, like a pair of pears, just sounds like someone trying to trick someone verbally.

I once worked for a company abbreviated SNET, and everyone at the company pronounced it as an initialism... S N E T, while everybody else just said it like an acronym... snet. Every day I would hear staff irritatingly correcting customers on the phone as to the "correct" way to refer to the company.

Some more interesting posts going on here! I had no idea about "palm", "lot" and "thought" being pronounced with the same vowel sound for so many people.

You're right, changing the location of my VPN changes the pronunciation in those links. If it thinks I'm UK, both examples sound like your example. If it thinks I'm US, 'gawp' sounds more like 'gop' and 'fog' sounds like you would expect but has a longer 'o' sound.

Not here in AUS they don't.

As a french speaking person, I just followed Gerard Nolst Trenité's advice.

Blimey that was hard to read! Must be such a pain learning English as a second language.

It is, especially for my generation, who had a very "written" approach to english in school. Fortunately, the new generation seems to learn english through more "audio" approaches, and this changes everything.

I for one essentially stick to writing it (I'll try to make sounds based on it after I've managed to pronounce cthulhu right), but I occasionally listen to various youtube versions of Trenité's "chaos", just for the fun and the variations between interprets.