Google Ink Sends Ask.com New Google Pen

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 […]

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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 replacement set.

Fortunately, our pen architecture is based upon Redundant Arrays of
Inexpensive Drafting Stuff. If any individual component fails, a quick
recovery is ensured.

We wish you a long and happy writing experience.

The letter is almost certainly from Adam Lasnik of Google, the same person
who sent Al Scillitani

pain relief
for his AdWords headaches. The title of the letter says, "search
evangelist," which Adam uses. Danny also says the signature in the Ask letter,
despite being smudged out, still looks pretty similar to the signature in the
pain relief letter.

Search engines have a tendency to play games with each other. Yahoo, in the
past, mocked the
Google Dance
for running out of beer at the 2004 party.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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