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The Google graveyard: Remembering three dead search engines
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show on American television to use the word "Google" as a transitive verb. It was 2002, in the fourth episode of the show's seventh and final season. Buffy, Willow, Xander and the gang are trying to help Cassie, a high school student who cryptically says she's going to die next week. In Buffy's dining room, they search through hard copies of Cassie's medical records and find nothing noteworthy. Willow, tapping away on a thick white iBook, turns to Buffy and asks, "Have you Googled her yet?" Xander replies, jokingly, "Willow, she's 17." "It's a search engine," Willow explains, because that's something that had to be done in 2002.
Adgadget: The Algorithm fails to find relevance
Ask.com's latest advertising campaign centered around the omniscient Algorithm is building buzz through billboards and TV, but is slow to be found in browser histories across the internet.Over freeways and between programming, Ask's advertising can be sighted in smug tag lines and over-joyous dance numbers. The campaign originally kicked off with a variety of billboards in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. With lines like "The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus", "The Algorithm Is Banned In China", "The Algorithm Is From New Jersey", "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves", and "The Unabomber Hates The Algorithm", we may have to ponder the moral implications of agreeing with the Unabomber for once.More recently, the Algorithm spread to television. Grinning in front of a gaggle of minimally-dressed girls, the first commercial to take stage showcased a man singing to the rooftops about finding "chicks with swords". The second spot proved equally as silly, as a woman got light-headed over search-engine-stalking Kato Kaelin. You know, the witness to that murder trial over a decade ago. Taking a quick quantum leap in the time machine, the "chicks with swords" and Kato Kaelin commercials somewhat mimic eBay's previous ads that featured similar dance numbers but were much more positively received.
