We descend now into Beavis and Butthead territory, but a reader sent this in, and it gave me a chuckle for the same reason it did him. When signing up for AdWords, he was presented with a CAPTCHA code -- an image of letters that you enter to prove you're not some automated system hitting Google: The code? Down at the bottom in the big read letters: "PNESS." Go on, read it aloud, if you don't get it. Heh, heh, you said penis. Shut up, Butthead. Well, I suppose it's better than the correct spelling. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: AdWords | Google: Parodies

Ed Kohler makes a pitch for Google to come to St. Paul, Minnesota -- and it's both a fun and compelling one. He points out that Ford is abandoning its Twin Cities Assembly Plant that comes complete with its own hydro-electric power station, handy for power-hungry (that's electric power I'm talking about) Google. But frankly, I think Larry and Sergey would find the underground tunnels a sweet enough reason to grab the giant area smack in the middle of the Twin Cities. The five coolest reasons from his pitch: Power Plant: 100 million kilowatts of energy per year from the included hydro-electri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Offices | Google: Parodies

First Ask.com had some fun with Google earlier this month, joking about how their Google pen "flatlined" and ran out of ink during a crucial meeting. Now Google gets in on the joke in good spirit, sending Ask a new pen along with a letter discussing the Google Pen's "redundant" architecture. Ask.com's Google Pen Service Restored from the Ask.com Blog share a picture of the pen and the letter, which offers Google's apology for the pen failure. The letter reads: We noted your suboptimal experience with our Google pen and are thus pleased to send you -- at no charge -- a re [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Promotions | Channel: Consumer | Google: Other | Google: Parodies

Google wants to take over car driving at the Inquirer completely takes Larry Page's quote out of context to write a hilarious article. Larry Page, Google co-founder, said "40,000 people die annually in US car crashes." Page then "proposed giving computers control over cars" so that there will be fewer accidents. Well, we already have the Lexus that parks itself. So why not cars that completely drive themselves. This is not really an original thought, and many people see this as the future. But will people trust Google to drive them around? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Parodies

The Ask.com Blog made me laugh with their The Latest Google Flatline post. In that entry, Ask.com writes about the recent Google capacity issues reported at Techcrunch and describes how it is so true. In fact, they say that when they were using a Google pen, and it "ran out of ink without warning." They described the flat-lining of the Google pen to cause "considerable inconvenience and loss of data." But in fact, last week, Google noticed several issues with uptime on several of their products. Techcrunch sums many of them up including these reports: Google Analytics being down Google [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Promotions | Channel: Consumer | Google: Other | Google: Parodies

Over the weekend two YouTube videos were released, the first named How to Sign Up for GoogleTV Beta and then a follow up named UPDATE: GoogleTV Beta. Both are attempts by the video author to prove that Google TV is a real thing. But so far, everyone reporting this knocks it down as elaborate hoax. Both Techcrunch and Google Blogoscoped call it a hoax, explaining that the DNS information doesn't match. Is Google TV a possibility? I believe so. Is this it? I doubt it. Postscript: See this article, FAQ: What We Know So Far About Google TV, for more information about the announcement of G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Parodies | Google: TV

About a month ago, Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts traded a number of sharp barbs over design similarities in Yahoo and Google. Google copied Yahoo! No, Yahoo copied Google! Danny described the tiff in Google Copies Yahoo's IE7 Page; Originality War Breaks Out!, writing "If I had time and desire, I'd sit here all day pointing out similar things that Google has copied from others, that Yahoo has copied from others, that Microsoft has copied from others, that Ask has copied from others. There's no end of finger pointing that can be done." Over at Google Watch, Steve Bryant has c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Parodies

There's an amusing item over at the Google Operating System (Unofficial news and tips about Google) weblog on What Google Can't Do, and screenshots are included. The things that Google can't do include translation, mail, blogs, news, ads and a few other things as well. It's a very tongue in cheek piece, and it should give even the most dedicated fan of Google a wry grin. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Parodies