The
Newest Verb In The English Language
A friend called me last night to tell me about the
guy she has recently begun dating.
He called! Were going to a film festival in
Boston tomorrow night.
Thats great, I said.
Actually hes called me every night this
week.
That could be good or bad, I replied. Make
sure were talking enthusiastic and not stalker here, I
said.
I wasnt born yesterday, she said. I
googled him.
We have a new verb in the English language. Let me
illustrate.
google
(gōōgel)
v. gled, -gling, -gles 1. To use a search engine for the purpose of
making sure your blind date is not Ted Bundys younger brother. 2. To
quietly stroke your own vanity by finding out what has been written about
you on the Internet, or make sure your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend hasnt
posted your personal information and a photo of you taken after a day of
re-grouting the bathroom on www.amihot.com.
So far, so good. The gentleman in question is not on
the FBIs most wanted list, nor the sort-of wanted list, nor even the
mildly desired list. His name has not appeared recently in a police
bulletin, on Interpols Web site,
nor in conjunction with the sale of illegal arms to Azerbaijan, unless he
used a pseudonym for his evil carryings-on, in which case, well never
know, unless my friend is willing to go so far as to submit his photograph
to the FBI and have them run it through that facial recognition system
that gets so much mileage in Tom Cruise movies.
The search engine Google.com
has somewhere in the area of 62.2
million global unique Internet users a month. The only ads it carries are
text-based, and come up in the form of preferred searches in the
right-hand margin. Users like it because its fast, it doesnt deluge
you with graphics and pop-up ads, and it has a comprehensive variety of
search methods.
Just as with
dating, the Internet would be a very scary place without it.
Admit
ityoure nodding right now because youve done it too, at least
once.
In my
editorial duties for Customer
Inter@ction Solutions magazine, I frequently use the exact text
searches to make sure bylined articles are original. Ive had people
sign copyright release forms over to us, and swear up and down that the
article was penned exclusively for us, only to drop a block of text into
Google and discover that the article has already been published five
times, by all of our competitors and on every industry Web site. (I
actually had one person who signed copyright releases for the same article
to three different publications.)
In the same
manner, teachers and college professors have found Google extremely useful
for spotting plagiarism. If a submitted paper raises a teachers
suspicion (a student that had trouble grasping complete sentences last
week, but today turns in a term paper that uses the word
pusillanimous, for example), he or she can type a few sentences of
the paper into Googles with the exact phrase section under
advanced search, and find out if that particular combination of words has
ever appeared elsewhere.
I used Google
recently in another waya friend forwarded me an e-mailed job offer for
Web development that he received via Monster.com.
The company was looking for a team of Web developers to work from home. If
you met their approval process, they would send you $3,500 for your
materials and your time. You, in turn, would send $2,000 back to them when
you completed the work and they billed the client, to reimburse them for
reimbursing you, or something along those lines. He forwarded the e-mail
to me, and my red flags started popping up. First of all, for a company
that supposedly outsources Web developers, their own Web site looked like
it had been put together by a 13-year-old on his first night with his
newly purchased Web Design For Dummies book. Secondly, the
companys New York address was 10104 Wall Street. Considering the
limited width of Manhattan and the fact that Wall Street is only about
four blocks long, 10104 Wall Street would have to be located a couple of
hundred miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
Finally, and
most damningly, the client companys name and city were stated on
the Web site, but they didnt pass the Google test. The company didnt
exist. Another perfectly good scam swirls the bowl because the con man
couldnt even forge the details properly, and didnt imagine anyone
would check. Nobody ever said people who run Web scams were geniuses.
(This is evident by the fact that I get e-mails every day from the widows
of the ex-President of Nigeria. If theyre all his widows, the man
mustve been the most prolific matrimonial prospect in the history of
the world. No wonder hes dead.)
And finally:
A use for Google that few people take advantage of for everyday use. Most
searchers default to the Web search and ignore the image search that
can be conducted for a photograph or illustration of almost anything you
can think of. Pictures of aardvarks? 7,920 hits. Need a photo of Spiro
Agnew? You can find 144 of them on Google. Looking for images of
traditional Polish costumes? Four hits pop up.
No photos,
however, of aardvarks in traditional Polish garb.
Even Google
has its limits.
The author wants to hear your googling stories
at tschelmetic@tmcnet.com.
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