Social and Political Implications of Google Bombing

[DanL]

Go to Google and search for "miserable failure"

Or just click this link: http://www.google.com/search?q=+miserable+failure

and check out the first thing that comes up

Discuss!

[Tytus Gerrish]

Ha Ha Ha!!!!!

[Blacknight]

Lol

[EddieMcD]

<news caster voice>This just in: President Bush announces his war on Google, claiming Google has aquired weapons of mass destruction. When asked why he made this move, he said that he had typed in "weapons of mass destruction" in the search queue, and it came back with 2,200,000 sources. It was also mentioned that when he typed in "oil", it came back with 10,900,000 sources. On an unrelated note, triggered by the one called "SuperDanman", hits to the White House's website have grown in triplicate, most of them wanting to find "A Miserable Failure", and getting sidetracked. When notified of this, President Bush announced his war on SuperDanman, claiming that robots are weapons of mass destruction, and must be eliminated. Despite the robots being battery powered, Bush is also quoted as saying "And look at all the oil we'll save!" For the FIRST News Network, I'm Eddie McDonnell, signing off.</news caster voice>

[jonathan lall]

Google bombing's been done for a while now by bloggers; this is just the most... high-profile. It is not an easy thing to do unless you get a large amount of people to assist in labelling links in a strange way for the benefit of Googlebots, so in that respect, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. It doesn't really affect search results, and in any case, it's a small quirk in the Google indexing system (which, by the way, is amazing) that can't really be avoided. Besides, it's usually kind of funny

[Joe Matt]

I can't remeber what is specifically, but if you type in 'hell' or something like that and hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky', you'll get the Microsoft webpage.

[Kristina]

I got all excited when I saw "social and political implications." It sounds like part of the thesis of every paper I write. Actually, I just wrote a paper about Mozart and the "social and political implications" of his operas.

Sorry about that tangent...I also remember something on google about typing in French military victory and it changes it to defeat...or something like that, can't remember. My brain hurts too much from studying for finals.

[kristinL356]

In the spirit of mocking our president, it's Bush falling off a segway.

[mtrawls]

For a slightly funnier one, try searching for "french military victories," and make sure you click I'm feeling lucky (and look why one site blames bloggers).

"Go to hell" was the search term that used to bring you to Microsofts webpage. But, as is typical, these things typically get flushed away shortly. Newsday happens to be running a recent story on this issue here