Somewhere at MountainView

Somewhere at MountainView.

Late afternoon.

Google Guy: Sigh. Our algo really does suck, sometimes.....

Other Google Guy: How so, dude?

GoogleGuy: It keeps returning low-quality farmer garbage

Other Google Guy: Mahalo!

Google Guy: Huh?

Other Google Guy: Sorry, just shouting out "Thanks!" to Marissa. She left me a cup cake this morning. You were saying?

GoogleGuy: Our algo, it keeps returning low-quality farmer garbage

Other Google Guy: Ah, right. We're gone all "Alta Vista" a bit lately, huh. People are noticing....

Google Guy: Hey! No one mentions the AV word around here, OK!

Other Google Guy: Sorry dude. So, what shall we do?

Google Guy: We could invent a cool new algorithm, like Sergey and Larry did all those years ago

Other Google Guy: Hahahaha....you ain't Sergey or Larry, dude. Anyway, they're more concerned with self-drive cars these days, aren't they? Search is so 2001.....

Google Guy: Look, we've got to do something. The technorati are getting uppity. They're writing blog posts. Tweets. Everything. And let's not forget the JC Penny debacle. The shareholders could get angry about this. Well, they would if they understood it.....

Other Google Guy: Do they?

Google Guy: Probably not.

Other Google Guy: So, what's the problem? My data is showing most of our users couldn't give a toss about the farmer stuff. Some of them like learning about how to pour a glass of milk. It's just the valleywags getting grumpy, and no one listens to them.

Google Guy: Right, but this has the potential to filter out. It might get on FOX! Too many people might get the wrong end of the stick, and suddenly we're not cool anymore.

Other Google Guy: But we're not cool n.......

Google Guy: Shut it. We're still cool, OK.

Other Google Guy: Anything you say, boss

Google Guy: Hmmm.......what we could do is go "social media". So hot right now. We could crowdsource it! We'd look very cool with the hipsters.

Other Google Guy: Mmmmmm.....sauce.....

Google Guy: We'll give 'em a Chrome extension. Yes! Make them do all the work. At very least, it's going to shut them up. They won't have to look at anything they don't want to look at. It will make them feel superior, and we can collect some data about what sites techno dudes don't like

Other Google Guy: Brilliant! Superb! One problem - won't content farmers use this against each other in order to take each other out?

Google Guy : Nah, it's just a "ranking signal". We have hundreds of 'em we apply to every search, don't you know ;)

Other Google Guy: Hahahah..."ranking signal". Nice one, Google Guy. You can add it to the other two hundred! Or was it three hundred? Shareholders love that stuff.

Google Guy: Laughs. Oh...kay.....almost finished this extension. It'll push it out there.....

Ten seconds pass.....

Google Guy: Hey! The first data is in already!

Other Google Guy: People use Chrome? Opps...I mean "People use Chrome!" Which sites are they blocking?

Google Guy: Wikipedia....

Other Google Guy: It figures.....

Google Guy: Oh, and Google.....sigh......

Satire. It never happened. Not really :)