2003-09-25 - 6:56 p.m.
Your Search "Glebdarg" Did Not Match Any Documents. No Pages Were Found Containing "Glebdarg."I clicked for the very first time on Google Answers today, and it intrigues me greatly. For "as little as $2.50," 500 "carefully screened Researchers" will answer any question you submit, and what's more, your satisfaction is guaranteed. I didn't know this existed, because as I've mentioned before, I am a curious mythic beast with two heads, one of which knows some things about computers while the other exists periodically in an inexplicable state of loopy surprise at the most obvious things about the online world. I was not aware of Google's carefully screened Researchers and their sagely Q&A mastery.
Google has taken over the online world so effortlessly because they've always managed to get things very right. I remember appreciating their site from my first viewing ages ago, impressed by their white-space simplicity, far from the madding crowd of glitzy blinking ads and microprint directories yearning for pandect completeness. And it's proven consistently useful, as just about everyone on earth already knows. But now I discover they're poised to revolutionize the wired world with the presentation of an oracle, a magic eight-ball serving up wisdom for a modest price in a strange cyberhomage to the itinerant Sophist teachers of the ancient world and their will-teach-for-food ways. Throw the price of a latte at Google and they will set researchers scrambling for your answers.
It's tempting to mess with this. (Who can resist the impulse to kick sandcastles or blow over card houses?) We've already seen some excellent forms of Google abuse, notably the stump-google games that proliferated online a few years ago, and of course, the Googlewhack.
There's good fun to be had with Googlewhacking, by the way. Smell-the-Leg-Johnny recently reminded me of the existence of this reckless server-straining Google game. It's perhaps best explained by Matthew Baldwin, the cleverest dern bloke around, in a very old blog entry of his. But for those much too lazy to click links (shame on you), I will explain it briefly here: find a combination of two common words that yield only one hit on Google. It's a little like link-husbandry.
I know I've violated the terms a bit, but I think it's kind of fun that not only is "exploratory Googlewhack" a successful Googlewhack, but it produces a score of 11,970,000,000.
(The interesting thing about Googlewhacking and other Google games is that they're so ephemeral. We stumble across miraculous combinations, and then we discuss them on websites and blow the whole thing. Anytime you find a Googlewhack, and then mention it on a website that happens to be indexed by Google, you destroy it.)
But never mind Googlewhacking. There's a new game in town: Think of Questions That It's Well Worth $2.50 to Send 500 Carefully Screened Researchers Scurrying Around the Web Looking For Answers To. Doesn't that sound like fun?
