DON’T ASK WHY- Watch out for the Google Monster

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DAVID VOGEL
If there’s one thing on the Internet that makes me nervous-besides viruses, uncontrollable pop-ups, spy ware and hairy 40-year-old men pretending to be 13-year-old girls-it’s Google.com.

If you haven’t been to Google lately, take a look. I’ll wait here.

You probably just noticed that Google is the Wal-Mart of the Internet, with every possible feature available to any user.

In fact, Google is such a big staple (not literally) of the Internet that it has gone from being a proper noun to a verb. You know you’ve arrived when your name changes it’s word class.

By saying this, I mean that you can go to Google (noun version) to Google (verb version) yourself.

I recently Googled myself, only to find that I am a professor at several colleges, including one at the University of California who cowrote a book called “What’s the Beef?”

Also in my Googled job description, I found that I am a Catholic musician with a bad hairdresser, several attorneys, a volleyball player at Stanford University, a production assistant in movies such as “Mission Impossible III,” an actor on Broadway, a comic creator who began a “morbid detective series,” the “Aesthetics of Austerity,” a fisheries scientist, the president (as of July 1998) of Disney Pictures, the senior editor of the “Journal Sentinel News Department” and something that I couldn’t figure out on a non-English Web page that included the word “indrukwekkende.”

Out of everything I found on the first 17 pages of my search, only one thing I can truthfully take credit for, which was a link to order my book-which happens to be available in Thee Bookstore.

But my point is not that I lead a very colorful lifestyle. My point is that if your name happens to get mentioned on somebody’s “blog”-an Internet term meaning “your-personal-online-journal-that-nobody-cares-about-but-can-read-anyway”-chances are Google will find you and post your name all over its search engine.

This means Google can technically keep tabs on your every movement. To me, it brings on a sort of “Orwellian” feeling, as in: “Google is Watching You” or “All Search Engines Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others.”

However, Google isn’t just a place to amuse yourself by looking up your counterparts. Froogle-which sounds like something that would be advertised during early Saturday morning kids programs as “part of this balanced breakfast”-is actually a shopping search engine that one can use to find places to buy something they need.

I discovered that practically anything can be found on Froogle because I discovered-and I’m not making this up-a weasel skull. (Which, by the way, was classily misspelled as “weasle.”)

Other things you can search for in Google’s different categories are maps, directories, images, videos, blogs and Waldo (just kidding on the last one).

But Google doesn’t just specialize in finding stuff. It also offers many other features that are beginning to compete with other Internet bigwigs.

For example, Google offers Blogger (Google-hosted blogs), G-mail (Google-hosted e-mail) and Picasa (Google-hosted image editing program).

One of Google’s latest features is a personal calendar system that is easier and better than rival Yahoo!’s.

But Google Earth is probably the scariest, when it comes to terms of world domination. Google Earth is a downloadable program that allows the user to zoom in on virtually any part of the world. (For example, you can see an aerial view your own car parked on the driveway or Osama Bin Laden’s hideout).

I’m not listing all of these things because it boosts word count. The reason for my ranting about Google is because it is basically taking over the Internet. What’s next? Google Web Hosting? Google Hotcakes? Google University? Google Counterfeit Money?

Some people think the mark of the beast could be coming through the credit cards we use or the bar code labels on the things we buy. I personally think the apocalyptic number will actually make itself apparent through Google, which will soon know everything about anyone on this planet.

Google will be able to manipulate the thinking of every individual in the world through its crafty task of only showing the Web sites it wants to show.

Soon, Google will gain world domination and, as the trumpets blast from the heavens and the earth becomes engulfed in a sea of fire, anyone will be able to say, “Hey, I can watch this on Google…and I got a great deal on a weasle skull!”

* * *

UFO: Entering a phone number in a Google search will reveal an address and a map with directions. (Try it. It’s kind of creepy!)

Don’t ask why.

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