Aliens Attack Google!
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!”
