The Medium The Google Alphabet By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN The New York Times February 14, 2010
If you have asked Google to "show suggestions" in your browser toolbar, you know the keen comfort of discovering you're not alone in asking the Internet questions it's not quite equipped to answer, including, "Am I pregnant?" and "Am I crazy?" You start typing "Am I - " and like an impatient therapist Google Suggest interrupts you with a drop-down list of concepts seemingly culled from the unconsciousness of the human race. Google doesn't let you wallow in your eccentricities. "What's that? Are you - oh, lemme take a wild guess here - crazy? Well, now, that's original. . . . " But if, instead of persisting with your weird questions, you stop at letter No. 1, dropping only "A" in your Google search, you don't have to face your issues. You go shopping. Type "A" and Google proposes Amazon. "J" gets you JC Penney. "T" is for Target. These sites, and 23 others, are Google's first suggestions for each letter of the alphabet. Tuning into "A" - or "B" or "Z" - on Google is like tuning into network TV in prime time: you get to join millions of people and do what they're doing. (Or maybe what Google wants most people to do. Google Suggest builds its hierarchies from a mysterious house blend of "searches you've done, searches done by users all over the world, sites in our search index and ads in our advertising network.") You find the big, broad sites that Google is now officially programmed to find. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14fob-medium-t.html *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
