55 Ways To Have Fun With Google (2006)

37. Googlefights

37. 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.

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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.

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38. What If Google Was Evil? Plus: Five Inventions of the Google Future

38. 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?

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1. 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.

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38. What If Google Was Evil? Plus: Five Inventions of the Google Future

2. 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.

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3. Google’s Blogger installing proprietary plug-in to run

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.

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38. What If Google Was Evil? Plus: Five Inventions of the Google Future

4. 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.

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5. Infamous cookie set loose in world’s biggest information merger

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.

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38. What If Google Was Evil? Plus: Five Inventions of the Google Future

6. Google spamming your mailbox

Google got this planet’s largest copy of the WWW and Usenet. Meaning they pretty much know every email address on the planet, including yours. And who else but the guys from Googleplex would know how to “monetize synergies” of this billion-items mailing list with some, uh, context-relevant unsolicited infomails?

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7. Google making you pay for Google Groups

A free Google? Not anymore. Googleplex business has become straight-forward, and instead of attracting your ad-clicks you just pay upfront. Google Groups, a 20-year old archive of Usenet postings – the digital heritage of this world – can now be googled on a pay-per-view basis.

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