Official documentation explains: “as you type a search
query into the new toolbar’s search box, you’ll see a list of useful
suggestions based on popular Google searches, spelling corrections and your own
toolbar search history and bookmarks.” Hey man, don’t blame me and my search
history for this shit; I have not been hanging out in the small hours exploring
raspy-tongue-loving Canadians. Also, your definition of ‘useful’ differs wildly
from mine.
As a record of the zeitgeist, search prompts are an
interesting, if a little disturbing, cultural snapshot. While some are
reassuring; ‘is it illegal… to seek asylum in Australia,’ answer: no (but well
done for finding out for yourself rather than believing all the tripe on
Facebook). Others reveal factoids you just wouldn’t have known you needed; “is
it illegal… to be fat in Japan,’ answer: yes the government
imposed a maximum waistline size for anyone aged over forty: 85 centimeters for
men and 90 centimeters for women.
And then there are the
WTF moments ‘why do… velociraptors throw bananas’ which is not only an
anachronism (velociraptors pre-dating bananas by about 70 million years) and a
physical impossibility (non-rotating wrists) but also particularly disturbing for
those who wanted to know why do birds suddenly appear, just because, you are
near?
We might want to cut the
search engine a bit of slack however; serious research (by which I mean Googling
then hitting the ‘I feel lucky’ button) has revealed that it answers more than
one billion questions each day - a heavy workload even for an American multinational
corporation specialising in internet-related services and products.
Then of course there’s
the fact that many, many internet users are smoking crack while they type.
Close to two thousand people a month search for information on how to get away
with murder (and with one thousand per month searching on how to hide a dead body,
we’ve got to assume Google had a helpful reply). Cat dating and ‘how to make my
cat love me’ are searched hundreds of times each month while eighteen thousand
people each month want to know why men have nipples. What does this say about
us? Are we really anatomically- interested murderous cat lovers?
It can be disquieting
to realise just how much of our lives Google has squirreled away for future
reference; some of the prompts are frighteningly accurate such as ‘what time…
does Centrelink open’ (don’t judge). But it’s fun too, addictive even. Searches
such as ‘I like to…’, ‘is it wrong to…’ and ‘why can’t I…’ throw up some
stupendous suggestions and many a happy hour is to be whiled away on the
resulting paths through internetland.
Just don’t try typing
‘what would happen if…’ Or anything to do with fracking.
