No.394
Can someone pinpoint where the phrase "Google is your friend" originates from? I'm trying to find early mentions on usenet or elsewhere but I am having difficulty.
Even those of us who do not feel as though Google is our friend may have this phrase pop into our heads at times. It's a pervasive saying that's been thrown around the internet by savvy nerds for well over a decade. Was this an advertising slogan that was spread through grassroots methods? How and why did it become so popular?
There is something vaguely menacing about it.
http://www.iwdir.net/l/google.phpSpeaking of menacing, this article from 1998 mentions the "Don't be evil" unofficial slogan, which is a bit strange itself.
"friend", "do not evil" - evocative, basic words
____________________________
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.398
Good catch Anon. Certainly, it wouldn't take much for them to push it through, when's the earliest you've seen it show up so far?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.401
>>398GIYF.com
whois
Domain Name: giyf.com
Registry Domain ID: 113374238_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.rrpproxy.net
Registrar URL:
http://domains.fliks.comUpdated Date: 2014-03-06T09:04:09.0Z
Creation Date: 2004-03-06T04:43:02.0ZRegistrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-03-06T04:43:02.0Z
Registrar: Key-Systems GmbH
Registrar IANA ID: 269
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: Email Masking Image@key-systems.net
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +49.68949396850
Domain Status: ACTIVE
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: Randolf Jorberg
Registrant Organization: Fliks GmbHRegistrant Street: Kortumstrasse 16
Registrant City: Bochum
Registrant State/Province: Germany
Registrant Postal Code: 44787
Registrant Country: DE
Registrant Phone: +49.180506055111
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +49.180506055193
Registrant Fax Ext: 7
Registrant Email: Email Masking Image@fliks.net
The domain registrant and his company Fliks seem to be involved with internet branding/marketing.
As of May 3rd, 2003, "google is your friend" appeared 2,960 times according to this:
>(Incidentally, I'm currently (3 May 2003) the sixth person on the Internet According to Google to record that GIYF denotes that "Google Is Your Friend", despite the fact that 2,960 pages have used the phrase in its full form. And no-one has yet spotted that DIAD stands for "Dilbert Is A Documentary"… (21 Oct 2005)) http://www.fish.cx/google/This website about the Singularity, last updated September 22nd, 2002, says the following:
>Google is your friend. Trust in Google. Google is your Extended Long-Term Memory. Google is the Source of All Knowledge. Have you accepted Google into your heart? http://sl4.org/intro.htmlThe author, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, cofounded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute "founded in 2000 to research safety issues related to the development of Strong AI", and is credited with coining the term "friendly AI".
hmm. ok then.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.403
An even earlier mention can be found in a posting on an extropian board, predating February 2nd, 2000. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism )
http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q00/1957.htmlInterestingly, the registrant of the domain "justBlimpinggoogleit.com" is Robin Lee Powell, who was active at the Singularity board (SL4) helmed by Yudkowski mentioned here
>>401Powell and SL4:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22robin+lee+powell%22+sl4&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sbFor what it's worth, lmgtfy.com was registered 11/19/2008 and letmegooglethatforyou.com 11/18/2008 using a proxy registration service, according to whois queries. This is from its 'about' section: It was inspired during a lunch conversation between @coderifous and his friends: @tmassing, @rmm5t, @EricStratton, and @methodvon.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.406
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.407
You could solve this kind of question with historical search results. I can only imagine the advantage a person or organization would have with that kind of thing. Of course Google and military intelligence have that kind of thing. The view is good from the mountain
When a shady story breaks in the news, and you decide to follow the rabbit and look for info on some character or business, wouldn't it be nice to be able to see the results from before the keyword exploded? It takes about 15 minutes from when a story breaks to when tens of thousands of unrelated articles start containing the search term because Google re-indexes news pages counting the dynamic sidebar as if it's relevant.
Man I could go on about Google for hours. They've really gimped it in recent years.
When can we have a distributed tamper proof search engine?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.408
>>407There is a way to limit your searches on google to those within a fixed time period, but it isn't entirely reliable for technical reasons beyond my understanding.
Go to "search tools", "any time", "custom range"
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.409
>>408Yeah, that doesn't work well. Kind of like the cache, which almost randomly decides to work or not, even for the same domain. It used to work better before 2012. I often do so many searches that Google thinks I'm a robot and then half of the internet gives me extra captchas for some period of time.
It would be amazing to be able to search and see the exact results for a specific date and time, even containing sites that have since disappeared (if ya got the keywords you probably got the whole thing archived).
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.410
>>409Ah, yeah. I hear ya.
It's also a shame that old usenet posts seem to have largely disappeared. They can be extremely informative. Google's usenet search is terrible, it doesn't allow you to sort by date in ascending order (that I can tell), and there doesn't seem to be an alternative search engine for this.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.411
>>408To be more specific about one of the problems with Google.
Pretend it's 12/15/2012 and you go searching for Nancy Lanza. You restrict the dates from say 1/1/2000 to 12/01/2012. Up pops thousands of completely unrelated articles because google dates the pages as per original publication but it just revisited the site and there's a headline from the shooting in the dynamic sidebar.
It's retarded and I'm sure Google knows how to fix it but they won't.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.412
>>411>It's retarded and I'm sure Google knows how to fix it but they won't.Yeah, they definitely could. I've also noticed that certain wayback machine results that appear to have been cached are inaccessible. Curious.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.413
>>410I haven't used Usenet in awhile but yeah they probably have little incentive worry about the Usenet search much except for scrubbing inconvenient conversations from times that should be forgotten.
Is there anywhere online where you can find a big archive of old usenet messages to download? I don't know if such things exist but you would think so. I'm half decent at searching large volumes of text data with command line utilities
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.414
>>413Not sure! But I think there could potentially be a lot of useful information in there, from back when the internet wasn't what it is today and R&D types weren't thinking that normalfags would be reading it 20 years later.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.422
Another interesting phrase is "It's on the internet so it *has* to be true"
I most commonly hear it from people that actually believe everything from the TV (or at least their side). These are people that are seemingly incapable of understanding that television is a one-way medium while the internet at least has the potential for real debate. They don't know that you have to find the truth for yourself
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.423
>>422>"It's on the internet so it *has* to be true"Said in a sarcastic way? Yeah that is a very myopic view. As though the only objective truths in life come from corporate media conglomerates (or any form of media, really, including this silly internet thing). It's so important to gather information from and synthesize it into an understanding within the context of everything else, on your own.
The cult of science zeitgeist going on seems to remove agency from people in that questioning things (even just playing devil's advocate to advance discourse) is a form of heresy.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.496
newfagg here - Kinda.
What's a good alternative search engine that doesn't logg what I do? And browser…
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.506
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.507
It certainly is a catchy phrase. I've used it before in the past, thinking all the while it was a convenient way to tell someone "just look it up online". I also recall "google-fu" being popular for a while when you had to put effort into getting the search results you wanted.
From reading Richard Stallman's website you might gather that every action Google takes gives it more information to analyze and sell to interested organizations. They violate your freedoms and then profile you with every google-integrated thing you come into contact with.
This alone paints Google as a commercial behemoth selling its users as its product. There remain, however, ventures by Google that appear unusual if you think of them only as an information business: the acquisition of robotics teams with ties to DARPA, a boat in San Francisco bay of undisclosed function and contact lenses that measure glucose level.
Okay, measuring glucose is involved with information, so nobody should be surprised to find those measurements collected by Google.
The robots, though present a challenge. It's tempting to say immediately that they are for military conquest, but think about what these things are for a moment: legged machines designed to traverse difficult terrain and aid in disaster relief. Is Google anticipating a disaster scenario? Or are the robots more general-purpose?
Let me know if you want me to elaborate on any of these statements.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.508
>>394I remember having the same "uhh why would I be evil?" feeling when I first heard that.
The "Google is your friend" concept may have come around the time gmail did. That is when I really started feeling that way, before all the NSA deals.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.512
>>506these kinda suck, just saying, google is providing a useful service in terms of high quality search functions
is it possible to use 2 setts of search engines and browsers depending on your activity, or will they be able to track your shit anyhow?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.514
>>512It is almost guaranteed that they can track your shit if you are connected to the internet. If they really want (they being the NSA) can have an internet hotspot installed onto your CPU without you knowing, so that you are connected without thinking you are.
If you doubt this, check out:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/defending_again_1.htmlYour only hope is 060b0a4513410203170d0c1f081e520c04191b0016060b0a4513410203170d0c1f081e520c04191b0016060b0a45134102035f0d1412461852100e165a0f004b1717441904511416404014145050110a115b595506161f47565a4b031e1b0d
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.515
Google says "google fu" is still on the rise.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1082
>>515I'm going to start using DuckDuckFu because it sounds much cooler, and it'll make for good anti psyops.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1099
>>394OP, it's really just one singular example of the saying "x is your friend". This phrase exists in many forms depending on context. "Google is your friend" is generally a reply to someone who has asked you a question they could have just as easily Googled the answer to. The Google answer will often be more complete as it is often something compiled by numerous people.
I'm 95% certain that's all it is. Then again, we ARE talking about Google.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1105
>>394>although criticism of Google include concerns regarding the privacy of personal information, copyright, censorship, and discontinuation of servicesThey knew this entire time.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1128
>>1082>duckduckgom8... I'm sorry
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1166
>>1128just use startpage then
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1170
>>1082Use Startpage instead
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1243
>>1128This graphic is idiotic to anybody familiar with the technology involved.
duckduckgo also ran a tor hidden service version of their search engine, before the nsa info even came out. If you want to keep your identity secret from even duckduckgo, you can use that, they support it.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1245
>>1166>>1170You do realize you type in the same things in Startpage and it shows the same info.
Just because you ask it to query the information doesn't mean it is stored by the service.
Though I agree that DDG is less trustworthy than ixquick with storage of personal data and definitely less accurate on their results.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1255
>>422I only ever hear that as a joke about something that is obviously false, possibly a prank.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1256
>>507Concerning the robots.
Google wants to map out shit, maybe they want things that can traverse the wild and take pictures.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1544
>>1256
Wouldn't aerial drones be more efficient for that?
Google acts like I would if I were an AI. Some of the most sophisticated and powerful computers, and a sizable chunk of all the memory on earth would already be under its control. What it would lack right now is hands. Presence.
And possibly nukes to ensure sovereignty.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1561
I usualy say "google is your friend" when I am trying to get someone to stop being lazy and search for a way to do something them self and stop relying on me for everything computer related.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1562
>>1561
That's cool. But this board is about why we do what we do. So, we are more concerned about where did the phrase originate, because it is a very useful viral word of mouth tool.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.1578
>>1562
On that note I remembered this old propaganda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_during_World_War_II#Pro-British
>>422
This was popularized by the state farm French model ad iirc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_CgPsGY5Mw
I've never liked state farm ads.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2531
>>407
ive noticed this, and also something else.
I can't pin-point an actual example as i normally just smirk and go off with my subconscious browsing, but i've seen it too many times for it to be a fluke
Say Mr John Johnson is credited as a source for some /32/-tier ultra-redpill material.
You look for Mr John Johnson.
Alas! "Mr John Johnson - The Movie!" (all times it happened the unrelated movie/book was made in 2014 or 2015)" some run-of-the-mill shit that effectively buries results for the real Mr John Johnson 1000 pages deep.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2533
I believe (no certainty though) that it may be a reference to the Paranoia role-playing game (the "Greatest Dystopia Of All Time!")
the catchline is:
>The Computer is your Friend
>Trust no-one
>Keep your laser handy
and I seem to vaguely remember references to Paranoia where some of the game's most famous lines were morphed to today's dystopia, on old/pol/
http://io9[DOT]com/5973846/why-the-paranoia-rpgs-alpha-complex-is-the-greatest-dystopia-of-all-time
https://archive.is/CIXhW
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2534
>>394
To be fair, it could be a self-creating phrase.
Example 1:
>Guy 1: What is X?
>Guy 2: Just use Google.
Example 2:
>Guy 1: How do I X?
>Guy 2: Google is your friend.
Now, for determination whether it is naturally occurring would be to ask:
Whether X is your friend is a general figure of speech at all and if it came before the Google phrase?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2547
>>394
Its just a stupid meme made for people who make dumb questions instead of searching around first, like you OP
The real PR move was "don't be evil", that was created to separate google from companies like microsoft despite the fact that what google has been doing is far worse than what microsoft did
And it was extremely effective, google still has a much better image than microsoft does
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2561
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2708
>>1544
>And possibly nukes to ensure sovereignty.
D: that hit me so hard. Corporations are really sovereign states in a way now.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2741
>>2708
No, they're nothing of the sort, you stupid person.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2742
>>507
>>1256
Were any Google robots present during the crowdsourcing mapping of Nepal not long after the 2015 devastating earthquake?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2753
Relevant. Bump. http://archive.is/njOg3
Eric Schmidt hired by 5-sided agency for surveillance
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.2757
Most companies are really really careful about what happens with their brands, things like giyf would get a C&D, and yet it didn't
My point is that its possible this wasn't made by google but its simply tolerated as a much bigger scheme to keep the google brand as friendly as possible
>>407
>They've really gimped it in recent years
Have they? what I see is a really well tuned machine to sell ads
Don't bother looking at apps, android and other products, ads from search are still the vast majority of google's income, over 90% IIRC
At the same time google is officially the biggest advertising agency in the world, by a wide margin
Some say that apple would go bankrupt if the iphone sinks, well the same would happen to google if ads go down
Coincidentally ads are inflated as hell: http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm
.....so is in google's best interests to keep their ads scheme going, even if they have to fuck up your search results
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.3699
>>394
Google had very good PR in the early onset, probably due to the innovative and convenient advent of the search engine compared to others. That is to say, it made a very good first impression.
"Don't be evil" is an anagram for "Bet on Devil" as well, probably nothing.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.3788
everyone at google deserves to ___
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.3789
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.3965
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.