google is grand
My friend at
In Favor of Thinking posed the question "Is there a word used to specifically describe the hopelessly addictive activity of looking up former acquaintances on Google?", to which I have no answer but I turned to my favorite source for words (and cheaper than the OED) -- the
Jargon File.
Unfortunately, there are only three Google-related words:
google,
google juice and
kilogoogle. I had such high hopes for finding an answer to my friend's question...perhaps some ultra cool word like
faradize, but that's already taken. It'll just be a matter of time before someone smart comes up with a good term, but I'm not that person.
But I will talk about Google for a moment -- that's one of only three companies where I'd ever seek employment, Yahoo! and eBay being the others (ok, for this one brief moment I like living in Silicon Valley). Things I like about Google include (but are not limited to) their technology, their business model and their IPO plan, but most important of all -- I really enjoy their
holiday logos, especially the really smart ones like the Chinese New Year variations, Escher's birthday, Michelangelo's birthday, etc. I thought to myself "must be nice to have a whole team of artists thinking these things up" but turns out it's just
one really creative young guy. Good on him.
I did a usability study at Google recently, and got some nice goodies. The
really cool thing at Google is that each building's lobby has a flat screen hanging from the ceiling, displaying real-time searches happening on Google right that very minute. Sometimes I think about that just before I type something stupid in the search box....
