I propose that for the next week, we all try something new. Anytime we are ready to somebody to “Google something” when we want them to search online for an answer, we replace “Google” with a random pre-Google search engine. For example…
“You want to know more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? You should HotBot it.”
“There’s this video that’s so gross. I don’t remember the URL, but you can find it if you WebCrawler it.”
“Your dog has fleas the size of your fist? I’m sure there’s info online about it. Excite it.”
“Hm… I don’t remember what years Golden Palace aired. Let’s Lycos it.”
“Who did that Polish hip-hop song that samples ‘Jingle Bells?’ Infoseek it.”
“Boss, if you want to know more about SEO, Northern Light it and get back to me.”
Just don’t Ask Jeeves it. Because Jeeves was a pretentious jerk.
When the week is done, thank Google for existing, because verb-izing (yay, anthimeria!) any pre-Google search engine sounds stupid. (OK, “Infoseek it” works relatively well…)
Posted in Technology
COD January 5, 2009, 5:12 pm
I’ve been doing this a bit recently because Google has been timing out when I try to connect. The beauty of the search bar in Firefox is that if Google takes more than about 1 second to answer I can quickly switch the search to Yahoo.
Marcus Mackey February 9, 2009, 6:01 am
Hrm… you could always Cuil it… 😉 Might not be “retro” enough though. Either that or Altavista or Dogpile it.