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The Disappearing Google Logo, a Magic
Trick
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
Here’s a magic trick to surprise your friends with. What they will see is
this: you are at the Google homepage, and you casually ask someone to
watch the Google logo. Then, you move two of your fingers to
completely cover the “o”s in the Google logo. When you remove your
fingers, to much surprise, the letters “o” will be missing from the logo.
Now you ask your friend to move her fingers over the missing “o”s.
After your friend removes the fingers, the logo will be complete again!
The trick here? It’s not really the Google homepage you and your
friend are looking at – it’s a fake page (darkartsmedia.com/Google.html).
And when you click on the page, the letters of the logo will disappear
after five seconds. Clicking again will make them reappear after five
more seconds. So when you move your fingers to cover the Google
logo, simply click anywhere on the page, and wait a bit before you
remove your fingers… and when your friend covers the letters, you
click again. (A third click, by the way, will change the page to an actual
Google homepage so you can perform searches to “prove” the page is
real.)

Fun With Google Maps, the Wiki Way
This chapter is a special one, because it wasn’t written by me. In fact, it wasn’t
written by any single person… instead, I created a wiki (a website anyone can edit)
and allowed for people to write this chapter. The topic was “Fun With Google
Maps” and the result is the group-authored text that follows!
Google Maps
Google introduced Google Maps in February 2005 to let users “view
maps, get driving directions, and search for local businesses and
services.” Instead of doing a multitude of things, Google Maps did
only one thing (but it did that one good): show you a near full-screen
map of the US – and later, other parts of the world – allowing you to
drag and drop the map (or search) to get to any location. Search for
pizza in chicago, and a couple of red pins mark the location. Clicking on
a pin reveals an info box with more details on what you can find at this
location.
Worldwide reach
Google Maps was originally different then Google Local, but they later
merged together.
When it first launched, Google Maps was limited to just the USA, but
other countries have been added to the fold, with the street level
mapping of the UK and Japan being uppermost.
...and I give you the Earth!
Increasingly, even the worldwide coverage of Google Maps is
insufficient for some people. Google also offers a standalone program,
Google Earth, which takes the experience to an even higher level.
By offering satellite and other aerial imagery as its basis (rather than
the pre-drawn maps of Google Maps), Google Earth has a far greater
wow factor when simply browsing the world. It does however offer
vector mapping as an overlay to the images, and allows for new data to
be added to the mix via an XML data-format called KML. Innovative
sites are making use of this to offer downloads of the data into
Google Earth.

Ever wanted to find out where your taxi is in New York city, or what
the desert looks like from space? Anyone with a website, and a little
programming knowledge can create their own layer on top of Google
Maps. A genius move by Google, bring people in to use your maps,
without having to front any programming costs. The continuous
development depends on the public, just like this page.
In late June 2005, Google released its now famous API (application
programming interface). It has probably become one of the most
popular ones out there. Hundreds of websites are dedicated to creating
“mashups,” which mix Google Maps, through its API, with other kinds
of data to create websites that are sometimes informative, sometimes
entertaining, sometimes ridiculous, and always interesting.
One mashup, called Housing Maps (www.housingmaps.com), takes rental
listings from the popular classifieds site Craigslist and adds it to
Google Maps, taking a boring but useful text-based website and letting
you browse it through Google’s easier-to-navigate map technology.
Rather browsing and clicking Craigslist’s list of links, you just zoom in
on a neighborhood, see where the houses are, and pick one. You can
limit results by price, number of rooms, whether they accept dogs or
cats, and even see pictures of the place via a simple pop-up.
The site’s creator, software engineer Paul Rademacher, launched the
site before Google formally announced its API, but the search giant
was so impressed with his work that it soon hired him away from
Dreamworks.
There are more mashups, such as Mapulator (www.mapulator.com). This
tool allows you to traceroute by IP address or host name to see the
path the packets take. You can run the trace from their server or from
your PC. It’s pretty slick, and has some settings you can tweak for
doing the traceroute. It can also do “whois” queries when you click on
one of the hops (to find out that hop’s IP). And if you just want to
know where any particular computer/server/IP is you can also type in
the IP or host name in their ping tool and find out if the host is up,
where it is, and get the “whois” record.
And then, if you’re the paranoid type, there’s Adrian Holovaty’s
brilliant Chicago crime map mashup at ChicagoCrime.org. It’s a “freely
browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago,” as the site claims.
You can select the type of crime you want to locate (like “armed
violence” or “assault”), as well as the date range it happened, and when
you click “update map,” a few dozen colored pins will appear. Clicking
on any pin reveals the details of the crime which was reported
happening in just that location.
And then, there was a Google Maps game of Risk. A clever idea, but
unfortunately game maker Hasbro didn’t think it was so great and sent
its creator a cease and desist. But the games don’t end there. Another
creative programmer by the name of Thomas Scott has created a
multi-player cooperative game called Tripods (thomasscott.net/tripods/) in
which users join together to protect Manhattan from the invading
Tripods.
You can use the New York On Tap bar and subway map
(newyorkontap.com/Subways.asp) to find great hotspots in the City That
Never Sleeps, and then, since you’ll be in no condition to drive, the
map also shows you the nearest subway station.
If you’re looking for a date, you can consult Hot or Not’s database
(hotmaps.frozenbear.com) and see the pictures of people who are hot (or
not) in your area… all put onto Google Maps.
Are you a runner? Or do you want to know how long your hike was
the other day? You can use the Gmaps Pedometer (gmap-pedometer.com)
to digitally retrace your steps, and there’s even the option to send a
permalink of your route to somebody else.
And saving you from a potentially embarrassing situation, there’s
Urinal.net (urinal.net/google_map.html), which will help you find a place to
do your business anywhere in the United States.
Goocam World Map (butterfat.net/goocam/) is a Google map of
unprotected/open camera streams obtained from Google searches,
mostly from Europe and US.
A more whimsical application is Santa Stars (www.santastars.com) which
plots Christmas Light displays worldwide and allows Internet surfers to
vote/comment on them.
Authors: Grimmthething, Nathan Weinberg, Omid Aladini, Mark Berry, Ryan
Singel, AC Zimi, Kyle K., Ionut Alex. Chitu, Aaron Wall and Esben Fjord.

Dave Gorman is a comedian who goes to great lengths to get material
for his show and books – in fact, he would probably go to any length to
get material. And that includes traveling around the world meeting
complete strangers because of a truly wacky (and fun) idea. But let’s
start at the beginning, with a seemingly innocent email Dave received.
Dave, 31, and possibly in an early mid-life crisis, wanted to write a
novel. I guess it wasn’t real writer’s block that kept him from doing so:
it was his computer. Dave in his show tells of a truly life-changing
incident:
“Jake [the publisher] lied to me. Jake said it’s just you, your
imagination, and your computer. That’s not strictly speaking
true! My computer is attached to the internet. The internet
contains everything in the whole wide world ever. I don’t know
about you, but I find everything in the whole wide world ever to
be a bit distracting! I would sit there at the computer
thinking… Right, here we go, Chapter one! Aahhhh.... just
as soon as I’ve checked my email!”
Dave continues to tell that he receives more emails than he could ever
read – not just from friends, family and colleagues, but complete
strangers as well. One of these emails in particular captured his
attention. The email contained very little, and even less that Dave
understood. All it read was:

Did you know you’re a Googlewhack?
Steve
No, as a matter of fact, Dave didn’t know! But a little explanation is
necessary in case you never heard of the word “googlewhack.” In a
nut-shell, a Googlewhack happens whenever you enter two words into
Google and you receive exactly one result. A Google result containing not
two, nor a thousand, and not zero, but exactly a single web page. Now
there are some more rules to it – your words must be contained in a
dictionary, and the result pages themselves may not be dictionaries –
but that’s about it. And in case you never tried, scoring a Googlewhack
is not as simple as it sounds (there are websites dedicated to nothing
else but googlewhacking, and listing those who found a Googlewhack
first [www.googlewhack.com]).
So when Dave was informed that he himself in fact was a
“Googlewhack,” he was stunned. The explanation, as he later got to
understand, was that one of Dave’s own web pages contained those
two words someone else had entered to score a Googlewhack. Of all
the pages in the whole wide world! What might be even more
improbable: when Dave met with googlewhacking stranger Steve a
while later in London, Steve ended up trying to find a new
googlewhack on Dave’s computer, and found one on a page owned by a
friend of Dave who lived in France. Dave says this struck him as an
incredibly fascinating coincidence, “since there are three billion sites on
Google, and I don’t have three billion friends.”1
And then, Dave caught the Googlewhack fever. Several googlewhacks
and a crazy bet with his friend from France later, Dave went on a
mission around the world to hunt googlewhack page owner after page
owner. How that works? Simple: Dave considered himself to be a
person who was found by a perfect stranger via a Googlewhack. Now
he wanted to know if he could continue finding others via a
Googlewhack all the same, and he aimed to do so in 10 successions
before his next birthday. He would look up the contact address
contained on a web page at which he found a Googlewhack, and
would then travel trying to meet this person (via airplane, taxi, train or
whatever mode of transportation it would take). He would then ask
this person to try out to score a Googlewhack herself, and if that
would be successful, he would continue traveling to the person found
on that new Googlewhack page.
While the concept of Dave’s Googlewhack adventure may sound simple,
executing it wasn’t. First of all, not every page Dave found contained a
contact address. Also, not everyone wanted to meet him, or
googlewhack for him. And there was a good chance that person, even
though willing to help out, wasn’t able to find another Googlewhack. All
in all, as Dave puts it, “Googlewhacking has taken me around the
world. Three times. I’ve played table tennis with a nine year old boy in
Boston, and I’ve been way too familiar with some snakes in LA. I’ve
met mini-drivers in North Wales and hippies in Memphis.”2 Now I
won’t spoil the ending, so if you want to find out if Dave was
successful or if he lost this bet with his French friend, take a look at
the book or fun DVD of the live show (www.55fun.com/15.1). In the
meantime, you might want to try finding a Googlewhack yourself... or
send Dave another email. Who knows what might happen?
End Notes
1. Barratt, A. World wide whack. (2004). (www.55fun.com/15.3)
2. Googlewhack Adventure homepage. (davegorman.com/googlewhack.htm)

Google Q&A is a fun answer feature built directly into the
Google.com web search. It answers certain questions right above the
search result, so there’s no need for you to visit a web page – the
answers themselves are extracted from web pages.
You haven’t seen this before? Give it a try by entering the following:
Albert Einstein birthday
Above the web page results there will now be a box reading:
Albert Einstein – Date of Birth: 14 March 1879
This works with a whole lot of search queries. You can even enter Who
is Clark Kent ... and have Google reveal to you “Clark Kent is the
civilian secret identity of the fictional character Superman.” All of the
following yield direct Questions & Answers results (note the answers
are not always correct!):
Population of Germany
President of USA
President of France
Birthday of George Bush
Birthday of Albert Einstein
What is the birthday of Albert Einstein?
Who was President of the USA in 1996?
When did Isaac Asimov die?
Isaac Asimov date of birth
Isaac Asimov birthday
What is the birthplace of Bono?
Bono birth place
Who is Prime Minister of England?
Where is the Eiffel tower
Where is the Statue of Liberty
When was Star Wars released?
Who is the Queen of the United Kingdom?
Who wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Catch-22 author

Before Google’s Q&A feature, a fun way to find instant facts was to
move around the words of a question sentence until you hit on an
answer. To explain, let’s say your question is “When was Albert Einstein
born?” We remove the first word, “when”. We’ll now do a search for
the several possible rearrangements of the words, and check the Google
page count for each:
• “Albert was Einstein born” (0 results)
• “born was Albert Einstein” (0 results)
• “Albert Einstein was born” (17,500 results)
• “Albert was born Einstein” (5 results)
... and so on.
The one phrase search of these returning the most results is our “fact
finder.” In this case it would almost certainly be “Albert Einstein was
born”, and the continuation of this sentence contains our answer. This
can be automated, but takes a while as going through all permutations
requires many Google searches. FindForward’s “Ask Question” search
(findforward.com/?t=answer) returns the following answer (you can see there
are some left-overs from the snippet which aren’t meaningful in this
context):
1879, Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879
German born American physicist who developed the
special and general theories of relativity.

Christophe Bruno is surely having fun with Google, in his own ways.
He’s an artist, and many of his projects are based on the internet – and
Google. In 2002 he released the “Google AdWords Happening” onto
the world. AdWords are Google’s small advertisement boxes displayed
next to search results.... and Christophe used (or abused) them to show
nonsensical messages like “mary !!!/ I love you/ come back/ john.”
Also in 2002, Christophe created the Non-Wedding page
(unbehagen.com/non-weddings/). Don’t expect to necessarily understand its
purpose – it’s art. You can enter any two names into its two boxes, like
“Peter” and “Mary,” and click “Celebrate a non-wedding” on the top of
the page. What happens then? Well, based on the names you entered,
Christophe will simply load two different images via Google Images.

Instead of spelling words by their letters, you can also “spell” words by
their individual parts. This makes for a good riddle to present to
someone. For example, when you want to spell “lovesick” you search
for “love” and “sick” and put the two result images next to each other;
your friend then should guess what the word means.
Other words for this “Google Rebus” game include: “walkman,”
“stronghold,” or “happiness.” (Search for “happy” and “ness” – the
first part will result in a happily laughing baby, the second in the
monster from Loch Ness!)
The Google Images Storyteller
Want to turn complete paragraphs into visuals? You can, with the
Google Images Storyteller (blog.outer-court.com/story/). You type a
sentence – a poem, or song lyrics, or anything else – into the input box,
hit submit, and it will automatically search Google Images to create a
story made up of visuals only.
Design Your SketchUp Dream House
Google SketchUp is a 3D tool for creating architecture and other 3D
models. Architects like it to prototype buildings, but the software is so
easy to use that anyone can have fun with it. After you download
SketchUp (sketchup.google.com) and follow through a hands-on tutorial
(which might take you as little as 15-30 minutes) you are ready to go
and design your own house. And why not make it your dream house?
Now this part of the book will live online: Send the SketchUp file
of your finished dream house to philipp.lenssen@gmail.com, include
your name, location, and a small description of your house and your
creation will appear on www.55fun.com/house/

You probably heard of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. The
objective is to find a way to get from any actor to Kevin Bacon in six
steps or less. For example, Sean Connery has a Bacon number of 2
(Sean Connery was in Wrong Is Right with Myron Natwick, who was in
Cavedweller with Kevin Bacon). That’s possible because Kevin Bacon
stars in a whole lot of movies. But is he really the center of
Hollywood?
I tried to find out if Kevin Bacon’s network is indeed as dense as the
Six Degrees game suggests. And of course, I used Google for that.
Here’s what I did, and you can try the same; I picked a list of 50
random famous actors, including Kevin Bacon, and searched Google
trying to find out if any two of the actors on the list were in a movie
together. Of course, this isn’t statistical correct proof. But it’s fun.
Here’s an example of a search query:
“Sean Connery and Julia Roberts” OR “Julia Roberts and Sean Connery” -degrees
This will return all pages with either the first or second phrase in them.
(I exclude pages with the word “degrees” because I don’t want to hit
on pages where people played the Six Degrees game, as that would
give Kevin Bacon an unfair advantage.) Whenever over 500 results
have been found, I will count this as a “hit.”
The following map shows all hits combined into a social network1.
Some actors of the 50 I included in the game actually didn’t make the
list because they had no connection at all – like Humphrey Bogart.
What does the map show? For one thing, that Kevin Bacon is not the
center of the Hollywood universe – at least not using this (nonrepresentative)
sample. Instead, Julia Roberts, Johnny Depp and Tom
Cruise seem to be the most connected. On the other hand, you can
also see that it’s easy for almost everyone on the list to get to Kevin
Bacon in six steps or less.

How well does this approach of visualizing a network fare with
something other than actors? We can also use it to find connections
between any two things. For example, we can create a network of
connections between things and their categories. To create the
following image, I used the words Britney Spears, apple, horse, speakers,
piano, violin, carrot, and orange. As categories I used food, actor, movie, book,
song, album, company, band, tool and a few more. I applied a threshold of
50 Google results to count something as connection, and I used glue
phrases like “is a”, “are an” and so on:
You can see Britney Spears is a celebrity singer. “Apple” is an ambiguous term,
meaning both the company, and the fruit.
End Notes
1. The visuals are created using Sun’s GraphLayout tool.

Can you guess the top Google search result for the letters of the
alphabet? For example, when you search for “a”, the top Google result
is Apple Computer Inc (naturally, the top result changes over time).
Simply note down the first company, organization, software, person or
product you can think of below:
A: Apple Computer Inc
B: ________________________
C: ________________________
D: ________________________
E: ________________________
F: ________________________
G: ________________________
H: ________________________
I: ________________________
J: ________________________
K: ________________________
L: ________________________
M: ________________________
N: ________________________
O: ________________________
P: ________________________
Q: ________________________
R: ________________________
S: ________________________
T: ________________________
U: ________________________
V: ________________________
X: ________________________
Y: ________________________
Z: ________________________
Solution
Apple Computer Inc, B’Tselem, C-SPAN, D-Link, E! Online, F-Secure, Gmail, H-Net, iTools,
Jennifer Lopez, K Desktop Environment, Council of Europe portal, Texas A&M University,
SBC Knowledge Network Explorer, O’Reilly Media, PFLAG.org, Q4music.com, The R Project
for Statistical Computing, McDonald’s, T-Mobile, whatUseek Web Search, V-Day, President
George W. Bush, X.Org, Yahoo! Messenger, Z Communications. (This is from 2005 – results often
change.)

How do you have more fun when searching? Simply: become a better
searcher. Here are some syntax basics as well as advanced tricks or bits
of trivia for searching with Google.com:
A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations “like this”
as well as a minus (or dot) in-between words, like-this.
Google didn’t always understand certain special characters like “#”, but
now it does; a search for C#, for example, yields meaningful results.
Note that not every character works yet.
Google allows 32 words within the search query (some years ago, only
up to 10 were used, and Google ignored subsequent words). You rarely
will need so many words in a single query – just thinking of such a long
query is a hard thing to do, as this sentence with twenty words shows. However, it
can come in handy for advanced or automated searching.
You can find synonyms of words. E.g. when you search for house but
you want to find “home” too, search for ~house. To get to know which
synonyms the Google database stores for individual words, simply use
the minus operator to exclude synonym after synonym. Like this:
~house -house -home -housing -floor
Google has a lesser known “numrange” operator which can be helpful.
Using e.g. 2000..2006 (that’s two dots in-between two numbers) will
find 2000, 2001, 2002 and so on until 2006.
Google’s “define” operator allows you to look up word definitions. For
example, define:nasa yields “National Aeronautics and Space
Administration” along with many more explanations. You can also enter
what is nasa for similar results.
Google searches for all of your words, whether or not you write a “+”
before them. Therefore, writing queries +like +this is not really
necessary.
Sometimes, Google seems to understand “natural language” queries
and shows you so-called “onebox” results. This happens for example
when you enter goog, weather new york, ny, war of the worlds (for this one,
movie times, move ratings and other information will show), or beatles
(which yields an instant discography).
Not all Googles are the same! Depending on your country, Google
might forward you to a different version of Google with potentially
different results to the same query. For example in Germany and
France, certain results are censored for a long time now. In early 2006,
Google decided to self-censor Chinese search results (such as web
pages of human rights organizations) in compliance with Chinese
government requests – which not only resulted in an oddly skewed
Google.cn, but also a public outcry from both diehard fans and
organizations such as Reporters Without Borders.
For some search queries, Google uses its own search result
advertisement system to offer jobs. Try entering work at google and
sometimes, you find job offers straight from Google.
Some say that whoever turns up first for the search query president of
the internet is, well, the President of the internet. Take a look at the
results for this search to find out who’s currently ruling you!
Can you guess why the Disney homepage is in a top 10 search result
position when you enter “Exit”, “No”, or “Leave” into Google? Try it
out, you’ll be surprised (I won’t spoil here why this is happening, but it
has something to do with adult websites).
Google doesn’t have “stop words” anymore. Stop words traditionally
are words like “the”, “or” and similar which search engines tended to
ignore. Nowadays, Google includes all of your words, even the former
stop words.
You can use the wildcard character “*” in phrases. This is helpful for
finding song texts – let’s say you forgot a word or two, but you
remember the gist, as in "love you twice as much * oh love * *." You can
even use the wildcard character without searching for anything specific
at all, as in this search: "* * * * * * *."
The following search tip, on the other hand, you better not follow. But
you may sing along…
When it’s late at night
And you’ve an essay due
And you don’t know what to write
I’ll tell you what to do
Before sunrise
Find something to plagiarize
on Google
Talkin’ ‘bout Google..”
– Mort, The Google Song

Googleshare (also called mindshare) is one of the most powerful
approaches to have fun with mining the web for data, and answers.
Here’s how it works; when you enter a single term or phrase into
Google, you get a certain page count. For example, you enter “Rolling
Stones” as phrase search and Google tells you there are about
10,500,000 pages on the web containing this phrase. Now you combine
this query with one of the Rolling Stones singers, searching for:
“Rolling Stones” “Mick Jagger”
This results in 1,470,000 pages. The percentage the second value has in
relation to the first is its “googleshare.” So Mick Jagger has a
googleshare of 14% with the Rolling Stones. This is very high; Keith
Richards only has a Rolling Stones googleshare of 5%. This makes
Mick Jagger the most popular in the band. Peter Smith, on the other
hand, has a googleshare of only 0.006% with the Stones – because he’s
not a band member, of course.
Here are some more googleshare examples:
Full House:
Ashley Olsen 1.46%
John Stamos 1.07%
Bob Saget 1.04%
Mary-Kate Olsen 0.97%
Dave Coulier 0.58%
Jodie Sweetin 0.56%
Tom Cruise:
Nicole Kidman 20.80%
Katie Holmes 16.34%
Penelope Cruz 7.51%
Mimi Rogers 0.57%
Star Wars 14.97%
Firewall 8.98%
Blade Runner 4.06%
Raiders of the Lost Ark 2.78%
The Fugitive 2.12%
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 1.43%
American Graffiti 1.13%
Six Days Seven Nights 0.9%
Regarding Henry 0.55%
The Mosquito Coast 0.5%
We can also find the googleshare for a specific year and an event. For
example, we can determine the googleshare for 1950 and “Disco,”
1951 and “Disco,” and so on for all years until 2005. We then
normalize this data by taking into account that some years are
represented more often on the web (for example, the year 1960 on its
own appears more often than the year 1961). What we get as result is a
peak year which shows us when this fad or person was on the height
of its fame, or when an event happened. I’ve created a tool called
“Centuryshare” as part of the FindForward search engine
As you can see, you can determine the googleshare for anything and
everything, really. Douwe Osinga, who currently works at Google
Zürich, created a project called “Land Geist” (see www.55fun.com/23.2 –
back then Douwe actually used search engine AllTheWeb, not Google,
to compile his data). Land Geist features different maps for different
words, like “holiday,” “rice” or “poverty.” The most popular countries
for holidays according to Land Geist are Mauritius, Cyprus and Spain.
Determining the “countryshare” for “Islam,” on the other hand,
returns Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran as top contenders.

Can you find the shortest Google search that doesn’t return any
results, using only the letters a-z (no Umlaute or accented characters)
and the numbers 0-9? How many letters will you need? For example,
you can enter “d8” into Google. It’s only two letters, so it’s very short.
But whoops – it returns nearly 5 million pages! Or search for
“njd2we9e2.” That returns no results... but it’s also 9 letters long. Can
you make a short search with no pages at all found on the web?
Answer: _______________________
Page count: _______________________
Also, can you find the Google search returning the most results?
You are allowed to use any character at all (not only letters from a-z
and numbers). Let’s say you search for Beatles. More than 16 million
results. Not bad already. Or search for USA. That’ll be over 1 billion
result pages, as Google tells you. That’s better, but you can go even
higher than that. Which single search query finds the most result
pages?
Answer: _______________________
Page count: _______________________

“Mini Me, if I ever lost you I don’t know what I would do. (pauses)
I would probably move on, get another clone but there would be a 15
minute period there where I would just be inconsolable.”
– Dr. Evil, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Both of the following fun ways to browse Google need the Internet
Explorer browser, so feel free to skip this chapter if you’re using
Firefox or any browser other than Internet Explorer.
Google Rotated (blog.outer-court.com/rotated/) shows you the normal,
actual Google (with all of its functionalities)... except that everything’s
rotated 180°. Including the Google homepage, the search results, and
even the web pages you click on in the results. When people visit
Google Rotated they’re usually either trying to adjust their monitor, or
bend their neck leftwards.
Mini Google (blog.outer-court.com/mini.html), on the other hand, doesn’t
make you bend your neck. Then again, it may make you move your
face really, really close to the screen... ‘cause it’s tiny. About the size of
your thumbnail. Good luck searching for something with Mini Google,
and good luck hitting on a search result page – as a bonus, if you
managed to do that the page you clicked on will be mini too!

Are you a Google expert? Do you know everything about the company
and its services? Or are you still new to the topic, and you only used
their search engine for a couple of times so far? Well, you can put your
knowledge to the test in this quiz which will answer the question: How
much do you know about Google? Get a pencil and cross the single
right answer for every question, and calculate your score afterwards.
1. Google Inc. was founded in ...
a) 1996
b) 1998
c) 2000
2. Google Inc. was founded by ...
a) Sergey Page and Larry Brin
b) Eric Schmidt and Larry Page
c) Larry Page and Sergey Brin
3. Which search operator does Google enable by default?
a) The AND operator
b) The OR operator
c) The NOT operator
4. Google once used Yahoo’s search result to feed its engine.
True?
a) Yes, from 1998-2000.
b) No, it was the other way round – Yahoo used Google once.
c) No, Google and Yahoo never had any search relationship.
5. Google Analytics is a service to ...
a) Check if your web pages validate
b) Check how many people visit your web pages
c) Check your Google PageRank

In 2006, Eric Schmidt is Google’s ...
a) Vice President Engineering
b) Eric left the company in 2004 to pursue his hobbies
c) Chief Executive Officer
7. What was the name of the search engine the Google founders
developed before Google?
a) PageRanker
b) BackRub
c) Gogol
8. What is the algorithm behind Google’s PageRank?
a) The more pages link to you (and the higher their PageRank), the
higher your page’s PageRank
b) You get 1 PageRank point for every web page you own
c) The algorithm behind PageRank is kept secret, similar to the Coca-
Cola formula
9. Why do some sites get “banned” from the Google index?
a) They tried methods to get their pages ranked better which Google
considers spam
b) They have content which is illegal in this state/ country
c) Both a) and b) are true.
10. At which university did the Google founders meet?
a) Oxford University
b) MIT
c) Stanford University
11. What is the “Googleplex”?
a) It’s where Google employees work
b) It’s a solar system which shares only the name with Google.com
c) It’s the server farm Google built up to deliver search results to you
12. Which words are printed on the Froogle homepage?
a) Search for any product you want (or discover new ones).
b) froo·gle (fru’gal) n. Smart shopping through Google.
c) Froogle. Just shopping.

13. Around how many hits do you get for the word “Hello” (in
2006)?
a) 420,000 pages
b) 420,000,000 pages
c) 42,000,000,000 pages
14. If you want to find a place to grab a pizza, you go to ...
a) Google Food
b) Google Places
c) Google Local
15. At the Association of National Advertisers annual conference
in October 2005, who said Google will take 300 years to fulfill its
mission to index the world’s data?
a) Eric Schmidt
b) Larry Page
c) Marissa Mayer
16. What colors do the letters of the Google logo have, from left to
right?
a) Red – Blue – Green – Yellow – Green
b) Blue – Red – Yellow – Blue – Green – Red
c) Blue – Yellow – Purple – Yellow – Red – Blue
How well did you do?
Calculate your points by adding 10 points for each question you answered like
the following: 1 - b, 2 - c, 3 - a, 4 - b, 5 - b, 6 - c, 7 - b, 8 - a, 9 - c, 10 - c, 11 - a, 12 -
a, 13 - b, 14 - c, 15 - a, 16 – b.
0–50 points: Though you have a mild interest in Google, you’re new to the
topic. Maybe you prefer other search engines, or you’re not using the web for a
lot of tasks. You have yet to learn how to become a power searcher, but you’re
on your way.
60–110 points: You already understand more than just the basics of how
Google works. Using your search power, you can locate almost anything you
want. You are likely making good use of Gmail, Google News, and other
Google services.
120–160 points: Consider yourself a Google guru. In fact, with your knowledge
you could write a book like this. Chances are you are reading a lot of news
articles on Google, and you know the ins and outs of its services. You probably
use Google on a daily basis for many years now.
27. Recreate Google From Memory
Before you flip to the next pages, try something: take pen and paper,
and recreate Google from memory. Try to sketch every link and other
detail from the Google homepage just as you remember it. When
you’re done, take a look at what some other people created faced with
the same task – and then finally take a look at the actual Google
homepage!
Which parts of the Google homepage did you get right, and which did
you get wrong – and can you imagine why?

Google News is Google’s automated news polling machine. It will
display whatever it thinks is important today based on what other news
sources write. The fact that it’s automated may make it more objective
(even though the included sites are still picked manually, and in the case
of China, the local government has a word to say in it too), but at times,
the Google machines get it wrong. They put the false image next to a
news story, or the snippet doesn’t fit with the headline – or the story’s a
hoax, like when Google News in November 2003 announced that
Google Inc had been bought by food giant Nestlé (“Nestlé says Google
will be renamed NesGoogle and have a recipe section added to its main
page”). I’ve collected some of the examples of the past here – it’s good
the Google computers don’t have human feelings, because they sure
would feel guilty now.
End Notes
1. Via Stéfan Sinclair. (www.stefansinclair.name)
2. Via Craig S. Cottingham. (xcom2002.com/doh/)
3. Via Caspa.tv. (www.caspa.tv)
4. Via SecurityTribune. (securitytribune.com)
5. Via Kennry. (www.55fun.com/28.5)
6. Via Eric Lebeau. (zorgloob.com)
7. Via Dr. Web. (drweb.de)
8. Flickr. (www.55fun.com/28.8)
9. Via Grant Shellen. (www.55fun.com/28.9)
10. Via Jennifer. (jennifermonk.com/blog/)
11. Goodle. (www.55fun.com/28.11)
12. Aberson. (www.55fun.com/28.12)

Do you wish to see a full-scale alien attack take place on the Google
homepage? You can! In fact, not only does Netdisaster
(www.netdisaster.com) allow you to destroy Google.com, you can destroy
any other web page – in a multitude of ways, too. You can send
meteors, flood it, nuke it, shoot it, paintball or chainsaw it, send God
onto the page, cover it with flowers, or terrify it with a horde of flies,
wasps, snails, worms and dinosaurs. If you’re not the aggressive type,
you can also just spill some coffee on the page instead...
I asked creator Denis Rionnet from Lyon, France, how he got the idea
for this tool. Denis tells me, “A few years ago, I started programming
an online tool that allows users to turn any site into some African
witch-doctor advertisement. ... So, people have fun with this tool and
send the link to each other. But that’s only for French speaking
persons! So one year ago, I was wondering if I could find another idea
of a tool that would interact with any site in a more visual way.”
Denis goes on to say that, after making sure his idea of weapons and
plagues “destroying” any target site was technically possible, he worked
hard on the site hoping people would enjoy it. And it did have an effect
on people, but with some surprising results.
Not everybody understands how Netdisaster works; that basically, it’s
just a bunch of visual effects without actual consequences for the
target site. Some of the users wondered if they were staying
anonymous during the attack, and also asked if the attacked site was
harmed. Denis says, “Someone wrote to me once, because a site got
out of order right after he had targeted it with Netdisaster – the server
of this site was just down, coincidentally. He couldn’t believe that
Netdisaster was not to blame at all, and urged me to do something
about it!”

10. Your kids still believe the Googlebot is bringing the Christmas
presents.
9. When someone asks “How are you?” you mouse-click in mid-air at
them and say “I'm feeling lucky.”
8. You shout at the librarian when she takes more than a tenth of a
second to find your book.
7. You just lost a case in court to name your newborn son “Google.”
6. Google is your second-best friend... and you're thinking maybe it
should be first.
5. Your Google shirt is losing color.
4. When people talk to you, you try to optimize their keywords.
3. Your last three Sunday family trips have been to the Googleplex.
2. You are convinced “What’s your PageRank?” is a good pick-up line.
And the number one sign you are addicted to Google:
1. You are completely clueless without a computer.

“I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come
out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The antipathies,
I think—” (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it
didn’t sound at all the right word) “—but I shall have to ask them what the
name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand? Or
Australia?” (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy, curtseying as
you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And
what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do to
ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Have you ever wondered where you would end up if you dug a hole
right through earth? Wonder no more (at least if you got an internet
connection): Luís Felipe Cipriani from Brazil developed a website
(www.55fun.com/31.1) based on Google Maps which lets you click on any
starting point on the globe. A small info box pops up on which you can
click “Dig here.” Afterwards you discover the location you would come
out at the other end.
I’ve asked my friend Justin Pfister (blog.justinpfister.com) if he knew some
cool places to dig. Indeed, he did!
The only place to dig through the center of the Earth and
land in China is the central west half of South America.
The Upper half of Chile would be a great place to start.
What if Darwin explored downward by digging a giant hole
in Galapagos? He’d end up off the coast of Sri Lanka in
the Indian Ocean.
Does Stonehenge have an important location on the other
side of the Earth? That depends how important you think
the coast of New Zealand is.
What if everyone in the United States started digging huge
holes? They would all end up in the Indian Ocean.
What if the people in Australia wanted to go “down under”
too? They would all find themselves in the Northern
Atlantic Ocean.
If the Lost City of Atlantis is still sinking through the
center of the Earth, where might it come out? It would
pop up in or around Australia. Could it be that Australia is
the Lost City of Atlantis?
If Japan really starts to run out of space and begins
building skyscrapers that go into the ground, they might
eventually poke out near Brazil.
During the Cold War, if some people in Russia built some
very deep bomb shelters, they would have ended up on the
Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
What if the people in Iraq dig too deep into the Earth in
search of oil? They will end up in the Pacific Ocean.

A googlebomb is when a group of people get together trying to push a
site up the Google rankings… a site which seemingly doesn’t belong
there. To do that, they all use the same link text when linking to the
specific site – trying to make Google think the words in the link are
indeed relevant to the page.
Probably the most well-known “Googlebomb” was for the phrase
miserable failure. It would lead to the official biography of President
George W. Bush on the White House servers. The effect is particularly
convincing when you ask people to first enter miserable failure, and then
press the “I’m feeling lucky” button; they will be referred to the top
result directly, and some even thought Google expressed political
beliefs here. Of course that’s not true – Google only created the
algorithms that now run automatically, and from time to time, get
abused to discredit people or organizations. Google’s only editorial
decision in cases like these is to display small disclaimers close to
googlebombed search results, and educate people on what’s happening.
A reply posted to their official Google Blog1 was:
We don’t condone the practice of googlebombing, or any
other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search
results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand
in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks
like this may be distracting to some, but they don’t affect
the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity,
as always, remains the core of our mission.
But the failure bomb against George Bush (which was quickly receiving
a counter-googlebomb targeting director Michael Moore) wasn’t the
first one to appear on the search scene. Adam Mathes of the Über blog
is credited with the invention of the Googlebomb. In his blog on April
6, 2001, he wrote:
Today, uber readers, you have a chance to make history.
Or at least legitimize some new jargon I’m about to make
up.
Today’s jargon of the day is:

Adam continued to explain the philosophy behind Googlebombs,
which was backriding on the philosophy of Google itself:
In a bizarre surreal bow to the power of perception on the
web, what you say about a page becomes just as important
as the actual content of the page. The page must be what
other people say it is. That Google adheres to this rule and
is by far the most effective search engine raises many
interesting issues, none of which I will attempt to discuss
or explicate.
Now Google is smart, simply having tons of the same links
with the same phrase on a single page will do nothing. It
requires a multitude of pages to have that link with specific
link text. But this power can be harnessed with a
concentrated group effort.
Adam was only interested in pulling off a prank – a political agenda
didn’t have anything to do with it. So, he urged his readers to
googlebomb his friend Andy Pressman with the words “talentless
hack.” And thus Googlebombs were born.
Of course, it didn’t stop there. Not only did Googlebombs work, they
were also becoming an effective tool in web propaganda.
“Weapons of mass destruction” was a Googlebomb criticizing the US
Iraq politics. Because when you searched for this phrase in Google and
hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button, the following page looked just like a
normal “Document not found” page. But if you were to look closely,
you noticed it read:
(A similar approach had been used as target for the words “Arabian
Gulf,” which returns a “The Gulf You Are Looking For Does Not
Exist. Try Persian Gulf ” message in the style of typical document-notfound
pages.)
Yet another politically motivated Googlebomb was for “French
military victories.” When you clicked “I’m feeling lucky,” the result
page looked just like Google itself, and – mimicking the Google
spelling suggestion tool – asked: “Did you mean: french military
defeats.” (In similar vein, another Googlebomb for “anti-war peace
protesters” suggested “Did you mean: anti-war violent protesters.”)
“Liar” was the word used in a Googlebomb against UK’s Prime
Minister. Entering it into Google brought you to a biography of Tony
Blair, who was also involved in the Iraq war and, like George Bush,
believed the reports on Weapons of Mass Destruction were accurate.
Tony Blair was also the target of a Googlebomb campaign trying to
connect the word “poodle” to him (it was less successful, but if you
restrict your search to UK sites only it might still return Blair’s
homepage today).
Ken Jacobson’s “waffles” campaign was a Googlebomb against United
States Senator and Presidential candidate in 2004, John Kerry, leading
to his official homepage. In response to that, Kerry supporters bought
advertisements on related Google search results urging searchers to
“read about President Bush’s Waffles.”
“Litigious bastards” was one of the more rude Googlebombs. Its
target? The SCO Group, infamous for its attempt to sue companies
like IBM and others who used Linux, as well as Linux users, and its
claim to own intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system.
As far as the campaign’s target goes, the Googlebomb was a success
and managed to propel the SCO homepage to a number 1 spot for the
phrase “litigious bastards.” As is the fate of many Googlebombs, this
one has disappeared by now due to search result rankings undergoing
constant changes.
“Buffone,” another Googlebomb, is Italian for “clown” and was trying
to make fun of Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime minister.
Today, there are simply too many Googlebombs around at any given
time to keep track of them all. Many people try to start new ones, and
only some are successful. Others manage to connect their target to the
search phrase they chose, but that isn’t always the hard part. In fact, for
many search phrases it’s trivial to make any page to be the top result in
Google; this is always the case when the phrase is not competitive.
However, it’s not as easy to get people to react on the Googlebomb, let
alone take notice. And even if people take notice, they might start to
counter-googlebomb, which then turns this into a rather meaningless
power game of which campaign attracts more followers to use link text
as needed.

Google’s ads are the way Google Inc makes money. They are displayed
on Google search results, related Google services (like Gmail), or on
any other site with a web owner trying to earn some spare change.
(You can buy your own ads using “AdWords,” or sell your page space
using “AdSense.”)
Now the key to Google’s ad success was relevancy. Google analyzes
what’s on the page, or what the searcher is looking for, and
automatically chooses a fitting advertisement.

Google Hacking
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity.
– Mentor, The Hacker Manifesto
There’s a sport called “Google Hacking” which is all about searching
for seemingly private websites using Google. In fact, you can only find
public websites using Google, because private (password-protected)
pages can’t be found by Google – so it’s no real hacking (let alone
“cracking,” which would consist of deleting, changing or abusing the
found data). But it’s fun nevertheless, and often enables people to
discover pages someone was hoping for to stay private. This happens
when the site is misconfigured, i.e. when the webmaster doesn’t know
enough about how to set up a website.
Here are some of the most popular and powerful “Google hack” search
queries. Enter them at your own risk, and know that every once in a
while you step onto a so-called honeypot (a fake website set up to lure
hackers into it, with the goal of finding out more about them and their
tactics).
Finding Error Messages
Search for: “A syntax error has occurred” filetype:ihtml
You’ll find: Pages which caused errors the last time Google checked
them. This may hint at vulnerabilities or other unwanted side-effects.
How this works: The first phrase simply looks for an error the target
server itself did once output. The “filetype” operator on the other hand
restricts the result pages to only those which have the “ihtml” extension
(which are sites using Informix). A related search is “Warning:
mysql_query()”.
Finding Seemingly Private Files
Search for: (password passcode) (username userid user) filetype:csv
You’ll find: Files containing user names and similar.
How this works: The “filetype” operator makes sure only “Comma
Separated Values” files will be returned. Those are not typical web
pages, but data files. “(password passcode)” tells Google the file must
contain either the text “password” or “passcode,” or both (the “”
character means “or”). Also, result pages are restricted to those
containing either of the words “username,” “userid” or “user.”

Finding File Listings
Search for: intitle:index-of last-modified private
You’ll find: Pages which list files found on the server.
How this works: The “intitle” operator used above will ensure that the
target page contains the words “Index of” in the title. This is typical for
those open directories which list files (they will have a title like “Index of
/private/foo/bar”). “Last modified” on the other hand is a column
header often used on those pages. And the word “private” makes sure
we’ll find something of interest. A related search query which finds FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) information is intitle:index.of ws_ftp.ini
Finding Webcams
Search for: “powered by webcamXP” “ProBroadcast”
You’ll find: Public webcams set up by people to film a location, or
themselves.
How this works: “Powered by WebcamXP” is a text found on specific
kinds of webcam pages. A related search query to find cameras is
inurl:“ViewerFrame?Mode=”.
Finding Weak Servers
Search for: intitle:“the page cannot be found” inetmgr
You’ll find: Potentially weak (IIS4) servers.
How this works: An old Microsoft Internet Information server may
hint at security issues. This is one of many approaches that can be used
to find such a weak server.
Finding Chat Logs
Search for: something “has quit” “has joined” filetype:txt
You’ll find: Chat log files showing what people talked about in a chat
room.
How this works: Though the files found are all public, not everyone
chatting on IRC (the Internet Relay Chat) is aware of potential logging
mechanisms. The “filetype” operator makes sure only text files are
found, and “has quit”/ “has joined” are automated messages appearing
in chat rooms. This search is your chance to tune into people’s chatter.
Note you should replace “something” with the thing you are looking
for.

You can use Google to search for people’s opinions on everything
imaginable. For example, you can enter “I wish I had a ...” into Google
and see what people complete this sentence with. I call this method a
Googlepoll, and it gives you instant answers to how people are feeling,
what they are wishing to achieve, and what obstacles they face. Plus, it’s
fun.
Following are some of the most interesting Googlepolls – remember
you can do your own as well, and all you need is a search engine.

I wish I had ...
• a goat
• a wife
• a red Dress
• a cave
• a name
• a million
• a Mac
• a Coke
• a belief system
• a big butt
• a nickel for every-time a dollar is spent
• a camera, or a digital camera
• a wishing well
• a bumper sticker
• a cat, or a dog
• a tri-corder
• a PlayStation 2
• a friend tonight
• a penpal
• a dolphin for a boss
• a river to skate
• a Gonani church i Hawaii
• a Boston accent
• a brain
Oh poor thing, ...
• she needed help but didn’t know who to ask
• it mustn’t had a very good life
• it must be schizophrenia
• it’s so hard for kids to understand
• it is sad that this will be the last we see of each other
• it must be post-partum depression
• it’s horrible when your cat is being bullied
• it is soooooo sad
• it’s too hot to be sick
• it sucks when you can’t relax even at home
• it’s wet
If only I could ...
• be an earthworm
• take you in my arms and say, I won’t go
• read, or write
• play it
• cash in a little bit
• count that high (I’d count all the stars on high and then my
friends, I think I’d count all the apples in a pie)
• find somebody who’ll give me a helping hand
• time travel back and “police” patrons with my authority and
flashlight at the Avalon Theater in Detroit where I was an
usherette
• make you see how much you mean to me
• speak to you, the way you speak to me
• show Al-Qaeda this picture
• find my marbles
• be certain that no one is going hungry
• lie to me
• clone myself so I could keep blogging while I tend to regular
business
Before I die, I want to ...
• know what the “scroll lock” key is for
• be the richest man in history
• leave sweet memories behind
• swim among the reefs in Cozumel and breathe in the colors,
the beauty of the flora and fauna
• raft through the Grand Canyon
• honor my country and protest this barbaric act by singing
“God Save the Queen” to all you men
• be happy and make someone happy
• stay in the ice hotel in Lapland
• live again
• see the world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes
• run a fantasy RPG with a Philippine setting
• give away all my money
• be able to own my home, one that I’m proud of, that’s located
away from lots of people
• feel fully satiated with life – self-satisfied!
• have a show at MOMA
• do something to make the world a better place
• establish and strengthen the principles of progress and
civilization in my country
• meat Marilyn Manson
• speak to my God once more as a living man
• hit 500 home runs
• celebrate me!
• see affordable travel to the moon

If I had more time, I would ...
• travel around the world
• have written a shorter letter, or a shorter story
• have called, or e-mailed the author for clarification
• provide more details and probably end up with a 20-page paper
• go to the gym, anything that keeps you fit and strong
• further defend my argument
• go to the party
• have many, many ideas doodled out on paper that I would love
to try to incorporate into fonts
• develop my ideas of socialism and the good life
• go into greater detail on many important topics
• certainly stop at one of the cafe-ouzeries in the back streets for
some grilled octopus
• have taken the train back
• have been more ready for Nationals and Olympic Trials like I
wanted to be
• realize my mistake
• update it much more frequently and put more work into it
• learn to ski
• have liked to see South Mountain Park as well
• explore my expression through painting and photography
Superman looks like ...
• a joke
• a baby
• he was drawn by John Byrne
• a loser
• he’s about to face a firing squad
• a dork
• he’s up to no good
• a human (so Brando lost that argument)
• a wrathful angel
• Tom Cruise
• an extra from the OC or something
• Frankenstein in Bizarro World
• in slow motion (when he changes)
• a typical Hong Kong teenager – dyed hair, outrageous clothing
and an attitude
And now I’ll eat ...
• my hat
• these bagpipes
• lunch on the way back
• something (and then lay down in my cleaned and tidy room)
• freshly rinsed grapes
• just about anything except chicken and bones
• only rice for three months
• your brains
What scared me most was ...
• the clear knowledge I couldn’t talk myself out of this situation
• the possibility of letting people down – especially me
• what was behind the words
• the way he looked
• not so much things flying around, but the feeling you got in
certain areas
• the violent oscillation of the wings due to the turbulence
• that supposedly at least 10 people signed up for the $3242 Wall
Street Workshop right there on the spot!
• that I fear communities across America will allow themselves to
be torn apart by terror
• the idea that these creatures could make you hurt your family
• having to tell my parents
• at no point did any faculty member discuss how we felt about
the Presidential race
• being able to hear the imps and zombies breathing
Then I realized that ...
• it was just my alarm clock going off in real life
• there was no way for me to call her now
• we don’t need “a wiki”
• I may very well end up on that list one day
• I had a will, a God (Allah)-given gift: to follow the will of God
(Allah).
• I’d want to cast a bunch of unknowns and then be responsible
for the next wave of superstars
• not only was the boat not sinking, but also I had a mask on
board
• I have no computer to test the stuff (the PC on my desk has
IDT C6 on it)
• suicide wasn’t the answer
• there was an underlying theme to everything I have been
interested in
• I was hooked, even addicted – not to the glamour, etc., of the
field, not to the woo-woo psychic persona, but to the thrill of
succeeding in experiments – addicted to the thrill of
surmounting the impossible
My teacher told me to ...
• hold on to the sense “I am” tenaciously and not to swerve
from it even a moment
• remind her that I had to leave at 1 pm for a dentist
appointment
• listen to the cars approaching in order to know whether they
had stopped or kept going
• hold the Japanese flag to celebrate the International diversity of
our class
• take a big breath before going underwater
• walk the nurse
• the Columbus Myth that children are taught
• pull down the corners of my mouth for stronger low notes
• be a good person
• disregard time limits, to take care of my parents and all the
injured and homeless people, to help the citizens I am sworn
to protect
The best day in my life was ...
• when I graduated from basic combat training (boot camp)
• when I got shot
• the day we met, or the day I met my boyfriend, or the day we
got married
• when I fired you
• the day when I first sat at the computer and opened my very
own e-mail
• when I resigned from being chairman of the board of the
universe
• going to the Britney Spears concert
• when I brought my son home from the hospital
• a Saturday not long ago when I first saw my true love Steve in
Fort Valley
• when I hired you
• when I got my dog
• October 27, 2004... Georgia vs Russia 2,5 – 1,5!
• March 22, 2004 when Limp Bizkit visited Poland
• when I was born
What I don’t understand is ...
• Why do hard working folks spend so much money on a throwaway
product and panic when they run out of it?
• Why he still was refused the entrance in Russia after the
perestroika
• Why they had to play this drama just to issue a DOS command
• Why can't I be in love with the girl I'm married to?
• Why anyone would ever want to randomly play a collection of
4000 tracks at all
• Why you chose to do something that can cause you to have a
child and then find out you are pregnant?
• Why this convergence is happening so quickly
• Why do people drive this way
• Why pull needed security forces from rescue missions to guard
businesses and goods?
• Why 710?
• Why the wars? Why the fighting? If each side agreed to respect
the other?
• Why would someone post a photo to the deletemes?
• Why didn't they build the thing to Central Puxi in the first
place?
• Why... aren’t the major corporations’ heads and stockholders,
who are behind all the “progress” – destruction of rainforests,
also human?
• Why wouldn't the prolife crowd be absolutely thrilled with this
pill?
• Why would you want a head of hair?
• Why do profs assign papers due the same week?

Googlefights
A Googlefight is when two search terms are being pitted against each
other – the one which returns more pages in Google wins. It helps if
you put both contestants in quotes, like this: “George Bush” vs “John
Kerry.” In that example, “George Bush” returns over 25 million results
(maybe with a little bit of help from his father), whereas John Kerry
returns only a little over 16 million pages… so Bush wins.
Let’s have some more fights:
Round 1: War vs Peace
War: 503,000,000 results. Peace: 245,000,000 results.
The winner by technical knock-out: War.
Round 2: China vs USA
USA: 1,350,000,000 results. China: 683,000,000 results.
The winner by judge’s decision: USA.
Round 3: Rocky vs Rambo
Rocky: 54,500,000 results. Rambo: 4,120,000 results.
Disqualified for use of weapons: Rambo.
Round 4: Nerds vs Bullies
Nerds: 7,490,000 results. Bullies: 3,880,000 results.
Result: The Nerds got their revenge.
Round 5: Cute Cats vs Ugly Dogs
Cute cats: 96,300 results. Ugly dogs: 23,000 results.
The close winner: Cute cats.
Round 6: Pen vs Sword
Pen: 113,000,000 results. Sword: 26,300,000 results.
Who’s mightier: the pen.
Round 7: Travel Europe in 7 Days vs Get to Really
Know Some Countries
Travel Europe in 7 Days: 0 results. Get to really know some countries: 0
results.
The winner: It’s a draw!
Round 8: Get Rich Quick vs Work Hard
Get rich quick: 2,010,000 results. Work hard: 13,600,000 results.
The winner by KO in the 8th round: Work hard.
Round 9: Christina Aguilera vs Britney Spears
Christina Aguilera: 6,140,000 results. Britney Spears: 12,700,000 results.
The dancing winner: Miss Spears.
Round 10: Chick Flick vs Art Movie
Chick flick: 721,000 results. Art movie: 285,000 results.
Winner by unanimous decision: chick flicks.

What If Google Was Evil? Plus: Five
Inventions of the Google Future
Google repeated their mantra in the statement attached to their IPO
filing in 2004, when Larry Page wrote “Don’t be evil.” This was to
remind us what the big G strives to avoid. And some might already be
scared. We don’t like to switch tools all the time, and put trust into
things served by Google.com. Google may be our website host
(Blogger.com), our community (Orkut), our paycheck (AdSense), and
last not least our search engine. But we are ready to watch for the signs
– and as Google also repeatedly states, other sites are just one click
away.
So let’s ask ourselves: what if... Google was evil?
Google front-page now a portal
The Google search engine has somewhat lost its focus on search. The box is still
centered and clearly visible, but there are a dozen new services surrounding it. Such
as dating, movies, chat, games, and what-not. Obviously the new mantra is: Don’t
rely on search alone. People are reminded of AltaVista, and not in a good way.
Google Gmail with in-between ads and new
connections to homeland security
Gmail usability and privacy corner stones – ads being unobtrusive, and conversations
not being passed on to third parties – are suddenly ignored for worse. Gmailers are in
trouble and go back to Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or good old snail mail. Others simply
go to jail.

Taking control over your desktop is one thing Google doesn’t want to miss out
anymore. The new mandatory Blogger.com plug-in smoothly converts your Operating
System to Goo-OS... the ultimate in registry tweaking, taskbar control, auto updates
and pop-unders Windows technology was never prepared to handle.
Google search results strongly biased
"Unbiased search results" was a warm & fuzzy idea pleasing the grassroots cyberhippies.
Welcome to the new web order, this is Google taking back control of its
server space. Google is rolling out their self-censorship technology beyond countries
like China. Balanced algorithms were yesterday; today we get human-edited results.
PageRank never felt so dead.

You heard of that long-lived Google cookie to expire January 17, 2038. And you
probably know Google shares it amongst all of its services. (Did you know this is only
possible because wherever you are, it’s something dot google dot com?) This means
when you log-in to Gmail, someone at Google knows what you were web-searching
for. When you log-in to Blogger.com, Google tracks what you are publishing. Log-in
to Orkut, and Google knows who your friends are, what you like, where you live and
how old you are. Let’s face it: now that Google merged all your faithfully submitted
data, they know more about you than your own mother. Time’s ripe for old-fashioned
blackmailing or something infinitely more clever... after all, these are Google engineers
we’re talking about.

The Google GoBot is a little walking piece of hardware with an
unprecedented level of intelligence. Fifty-thousand beta versions have
been produced in the year 2032, set loose on earth to crawl our cities. A
GoBot has just one mission in its electronic mind: uncover fresh
information wherever it may hide, whenever it may show. Details will be
reported back to the Google headquarters in real-time.
What went right: Google GoBots were designed to uncover secrets,
and they were bound to legal laws, too. Spying on dark alleys with their
night vision lenses they helped report several crimes. One rather
important Las Vegas led drug syndicate had to give up its nationwide
activities “due to those pestering Googlebots alerting the police.”
What went wrong: Google GoBots had their own idea of human
privacy. They started lurking in people’s backyards and gardens, peeking
through windows into bathrooms, questioning neighbors, and even
handing out Google Candy to kids to make them reveal important
information on their parents.