FYI
>Go to Google and type in "French military victories" and the
the "I'm
>feeling lucky" bar.
Internet Parody Hands French Military a Defeat
--------------------
By Richard J. Dalton Jr
STAFF WRITER
March 13, 2003
The French always end up as military toast, or so it seems
from a search on the popular Google search engine. But a
miffed Canadian student is actually behind a prank that says
no documents are found in a Google search for "French military
victories."
The search brings up a page that asks: "Did you mean 'french
military defeats.'"
The French did win some wars. In fact, Google lists about
63,100 pages of French military victories.
But a Web page says no documents are found when searching for
"French military victories" using Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky"
button, which bypasses the list of search results and jumps
directly to the first Web page in the list.
That happens to be a mock-up page of Google, suggesting a
search for "french military defeats." The large Google logo at
the top tends to distract Web surfers from the address in the
Web browser: www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html.
Steve Lerner, a 22-year-old Toronto student, said he created
the page as "a humorous way of showing political opposition
against France's weaseling."
Lerner said he received 50,000 hits in 18 hours on Tuesday,
before the site went down for technical reasons unrelated to
the large volume of Web traffic. He said it will be back up by
the weekend or sooner.
Lerner said he managed to make the page the first search
result by listing "French military victories" in several key
areas. But Google claims its complex search methods make human
tampering with search results difficult.
Lerner hasn't heard from Google, and chances are he won't.
A spokesman for Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., had no
comment. But the search engine generally turns its back on
parodies, recognizing that eventually the pages will be less
visible as they fall down further in the search engine's
results list.
Copyright (c) 2003, Newsday, Inc.
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wogoog133170831mar13,0,2821577.story
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