Monday, January 5, 2009

Google from "a" to "z"

I'm not sure exactly what I was doing, but the other day I did a Google search for the letter "D." What came up as the first hit? The wikipedia entry for the Democratic Party.

Hmmmm.

I decided to do a Google search for the letter "R." No Republican Party. I scrolled through the first few pages of "R" results. No entry for the Republican Party. Don't believe me? Here are the results:



...and we've always been lead to believe that there's a huge right wing conspiracy. Hah!

This little exercise piqued my curiosity just a smidgen so I did Google searches for every lower case letter of the English alphabet. The results were at times quirky, unexpected, totally expected, and just so-so. Here they are:

  • A HTML links. Obama speech. Don't have much use for either.
  • B Wikipedia, second letter in the Latin alphabet.
  • C Speed of light and lots of Citigroup stuff. Interesting fact: Citigroup is burning through taxpayer money at the speed of light.
  • D Democratic party.
  • E Natural log and E! Online.
  • F Ford Motor Company. The only automaker not on the dole. I will remember this next time I go new car shopping. (Cue laugh track)
  • G Surprise! Gmail scores the coveted first spot. Second goes to Wikipedia on the Latin letter G. Seems like they missed the spot on this one.
  • H Planck's constant and Wikipedia Hydrogen. I'm thinking Planck's constant doesn't get a lot of hits.
  • I Apple's iPod and iTunes at the top then Wikipedia Latin...
  • J Wikipedia Latin J
  • K Boltzmann constant and Wikipedia K. BTW the unknown (to me) label of K Records ranked above K Mart by one spot on the list.
  • L LaTeX project. Where's Wikipedia's Latin L for crying out loud?!
  • M The movie "M" (1931) which starred Peter Lorre. I have no gripe here. Also, Wikipedia is back with the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet.
  • N Nitrogen, the Wikipedia entry. OK that makes sense. We also learn from Wikipedia that, "N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet." Don't know how I've made it this far in life without that pearl of wisdom.
  • O O, The Oprah Magazine. Anyone surprised? Beats out number two—and one of my favorite gasses—oxygen, and another name from the theatrical world, who I hope and pray outlasts Oprah: Othello.
  • P Wikipedia Latin alphabet.
  • Q Wikipedia, Semitic sound value.
  • R R-project website. Something to do with statistical programming. Wikipedia runs a distant third here.
  • S Craigslist. Yeah, that's right, Craigslist. You explain it to me. Also on the first page of search results: Victoria's Secret. I guess it just takes two S's to rank highly here...or maybe not. With that logic Guess Jeans should have beat them both.
  • T The website for public transit in Boston. Wha?
  • U After a long hiatus, Wikipedia is back with an alphabet listing.
  • V Is for Visa. No Mastercard. No American Express. No Discover. Are people really sitting down at the computers and saying themselves, "Gee, I wonder how I can get a Visa card?" Hello, go look in your mailbox, moron.
  • W Interesting. Our second movie. Oliver Stone's "W" (2008). Do you think it will still be listed first in another 78 years like the Peter Lorre movie "M"? And let's face it, shouldn't President Bush get the number one spot here?
  • X Hmmm. What would you expect to find here? You'd be wrong. "X The Band" scored the top spot. The kind of scoring that gets XXX ratings didn't show on the first page at all. You know Google is messing with this search big time.
  • Y Huge surprise here: Yahoo! And Yahoo! mail took the number two spot. If Yahoo! and Microsoft ever pull off the merger, it'll be, "Hello page 47 of search results!"
  • Z And to end this pointless list, Wikipedia's back on top, beating out the much faster and sexier 2008 Nissan Z.

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