Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Any Other Questions?

Google has implemented a snarky new service, Let Me Google That For You. Suppose someone e-mails you a question he could have answered for himself in a fraction of the time it took to send the e-mail, such as "What does snarky mean?" I go to LMGTFY, type in "snarky meaning" and get this link, which I can then send back to my questioner. I doubt I'll ever have occasion to use this; first, nearly everyone I know has the sense to use Google when appropriate. Second, I do get less-than-informed questions from time to time, but not over e-mail. And god knows I have asked some dumb questions in my time. If there is a genuine lack of information, I'm happy to offer whatever I know. If it's just a question asked without thought, no need to be a jerk about it. Which brings me to the third reason I'll probably never use it: it really is pretty snarky. I like snark as much as anyone, but I really don't like directing it towards people, just out at the world in general, and to abstractly bitch about the state of things. I don't wish to offend, just to gripe. If you haven't already, click on the second link, and see if you don't agree.

Followup: Received this in the comments, and thought it should be up front with the main part of the post: "Hi. Thanks for blogging about the site. I just wanted to let you know that it is in no way associated with Google. Please see the "About" link at the bottom of the site." I found this at the Google Blogoscoped site, and going back to the original post, it clearly says in the last line, "... and nope, neither site is an official Google site." My bad. And you have to admit, it does look like Google. Which is why it's so funny.

2 comments:

rmm5t said...

Hi. Thanks for blogging about the site. I just wanted to let you know that it is in no way associated with Google. Please see the "About" link at the bottom of the site.

Callan Bentley said...

That is brilliant.