Google Humor

July 4, 2003 12:27 PM

google meme du jour. Browse to google and type "weapons of mass destruction" WITHOUT the quotation marks. Do NOT click Google Search. Instead, click "I'm Feeling Lucky." An error message will appear. Read it.
posted by squirrel (19 comments total)

Here's a direct link.
posted by squirrel at 12:30 PM on July 4, 2003

Previously posted here.
posted by misteraitch at 12:37 PM on July 4, 2003

Also try typing this phrase: French Military Victories. Then press the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Hilarity insues.
posted by elwoodwiles at 12:38 PM on July 4, 2003

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't about 50th time I've heard about it. Sometimes it seems like half the people on the Net are mailing others about it.
posted by madman at 12:42 PM on July 4, 2003

No, it would still be bad.
posted by adam at 12:45 PM on July 4, 2003

Please to lighten up.

I'd seen the 404 message before, which is intelligent and funny. But I hadn't seen that it was a Google easter egg, nor was that fact posted previously.
posted by scarabic at 1:18 PM on July 4, 2003

It's not an "easter egg." All the "I'm feeling lucky" button does is take you directly to the number one search result.

DO click search. DO click the first link.

Same old same old.
posted by RKB at 1:24 PM on July 4, 2003

It's not a google easter egg. It works exactly the same way that the french military victories 'joke' works. Look at the url - http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html. or http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

They are spoof google pages. And like most spoofs - not really funny for long, but kinda clever tho'.
posted by dash_slot- at 1:25 PM on July 4, 2003

*echo*
posted by dash_slot- at 1:26 PM on July 4, 2003

*cries*
posted by matteo at 1:28 PM on July 4, 2003

Mind you, on second thoughts - the best way to humiliate (and therefore disempower) bullies is to laugh at them.

Please don't call me a 'bushfilterer' for that - fair comment an'all...(",)
posted by dash_slot- at 1:32 PM on July 4, 2003

It is not a Google easter egg. It is a Googlebomb.
posted by dhartung at 1:43 PM on July 4, 2003

I think this comment from yesterday's double post says it best.
posted by brism at 1:44 PM on July 4, 2003

I know the page is externally hosted, unaffiliated. But the fact that it ranks #1 for the search term is what I thought might be an easter egg.

The Google relevance calculation takes place in a black box, so it's perfectly conceivable that this is the #1 result artificially, because someone there thinks it's funny.

Then again, maybe it just indexes really well, and constitutes, as you say, a bomb.

I don't think there's any way to prove which is the case, unless you know a Google engineer with loose lips.
posted by scarabic at 2:11 PM on July 4, 2003

How postmodern.
posted by insomnyuk at 2:21 PM on July 4, 2003

It's baffling the resurgence in this. It came around my work today as a global email, to which half the recipients went "hey! We know about this. We've known for ever!" and the other half passed it on.

It actually made it into our paper, too. Sheesh.
posted by bonaldi at 2:23 PM on July 4, 2003

How many more times does it get posted before it makes the sidebar?
posted by jonson at 2:24 PM on July 4, 2003

Oh, yes, and it was a google person that was responsible:
More here
posted by bonaldi at 2:25 PM on July 4, 2003

And now you know... the rest of the story!
link for people who want the news unpolluted by Orlowski's anti-blog bile
posted by wendell at 2:32 PM on July 4, 2003