Weekly Search Roundup: Summer Search Blockbuster Edition! Rumors Run Rampant, Bombs are Defused, Hostages are Taken

Written By Noah Mallin | July 25, 2008 | Share This |

Tropic Thunder

Summer is blockbuster season at the multiplex: Long lines, stuff blowin’ up onscreen real good, and $25 on snacks at the concession stand while you sit in air-conditioned comfort. This week’s search industry news also brought some of the thrills of a summer blockbuster or at least perhaps we can spin them that way. To the SearchCave!

Let’s lead off with the obligatory Google updates:

Digg For Fire

We posted about Google’s fondness for Digg-style tools in their beta search testing. Now the rumormill is cranked up again with buzz that Google’s just gonna up and buy the darn thang. Of course this could have an effect on search rankings – will more Diggs lead to higher placement? Since this is the third go-round on this particular rumor about a hungry predator I’m giving this the blockbuster equivalent of Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr. in Jaws 3-D.

As the poster says the third dimension is “terror” — also terrible.

The Grassy Knol – Can Google Assassinate Wikipedia?

This one has so many blockbuster memes that it’s hard to pick one. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers when Google sees a product it likes it grows a pulsating seedpod in Google Beta which then springs to life as the original shrivels to dust (at least that’s how they’d like it to work). Our victim du jour is Wikipedia which Google is aping with their new Knol service. There are crucial differences in how the two are structured and naturally Knol is designed as yet another AdWords rev-gen platform in contrast to Wikipedia’s open source charitable nature. So maybe it’s more of a Terminator 2 deal, with Google as the constantly shape-shifting future droid? Nah, this is a straight up Jean Claude Van Damme Double Impact ass-kicking twins scenario.

After all, what’s better than Jean Claude? TWO Jean Claudes…

Mad Google Bombers Thwarted…For Now

Remember the Google bombing craze? The Washington Post does in a piece reminiscing about the good old days of typing in “failure” and getting back George W. Bush’s bio thanks to some clever folks gaming the system. Sounds like Google knows now not to let their search algorithms go slower than 50 miles an hour…

“Dude, somebody totally Rickrolled you…”

In other search news:

Black People Search Like This, While White People Totally Search This Way…

Sick of searching on the Man’s search engine? White rich dude Barry Diller has funded a new search service aimed at the black community called RushmoreDrive. Maybe he meant to call it BullworthBlvd? Old people get names mixed up frequently. Wes Anderson, Warren Beatty, Barry Diller, three names I associate with insight into black consumers. This is clearly Beverly Hills Cop – the bad guy even looks like Barry Diller – plus the whole fish out of water thing where we learn that Detroit cop Eddie Murphy can work the existing system as good if not better than the snoots out in California. Axel Foley doesn’t need his own search engine thank you very little.

They shoot the same, they shade their eyes the same way, but they clearly need segregated search platforms…

What Codes Does He Have, This Man You Seek?

This last one is almost exactly the plot of last summer’s Bruce Willis opus Live Free or Die Hard. A disgruntled San Francisco city computer tech personalized the passwords to all kinds of key city systems and then refused to hand them over unless his demands were met. “Using his digital keys to the kingdom, he locked out everyone else at an administrative level from a network holding e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings…” Dashing serial-dating mayor Gavin Newsom did battle with computer controlled traffic lights, fighter jets, and crashed a car into a helicopter before nabbing the perp. Actually, the cybergrudgster refused to hand over the codes until Newsom personally visited him Clarice Starling-like at his cell. No one knows what they said, but the lambs stopped screaming and the codes are now safely in the mayor’s hands.