If you think about all the things people search for on Google, “God” has to be pretty high up there, right? I mean, since the dawn of man, people have been searching for the meaning of life and its creator, so what better way to do that than with a search engine? But divinity apparently has nothing on cheap domain names.
When you try to do a search for “God” with the new Google Instant feature, it predicts that you’re going to type in “Godaddy” instead. If you hit a space after the “d”, it thinks you’re looking for “God of War”, the popular videogame. So the only way to actually search for “God” with this new Google Instant feature is to hit the search button.
To make Google Instant work, the search giant looks across all queries to find the most popular ones and then predicts what it thinks you’re going to type and auto-populates the results based on that. Clearly, both “Godaddy” and “God of War” are more popular queries on Google — something that is either humorous or sad depending on your level of religiousness.
Also kind of humorous is that “Godaddy” isn’t really the name of the company, it’s “Go Daddy” with a space (though the domain is of course godaddy.com). Also interesting is that a Go Daddy is a heavy Google AdWords user, and so the first result for the “God” query is a sponsored link for Go Daddy.
Go Daddy itself is currently in the process of looking for a buyer. Perhaps if they started touting the fact that they’re ranked higher than God in Google, they’ll get even more than the $1 billion+ price they’re expected to go for.
[thanks Alex]
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
Go Daddy is the Web’s top platform for small businesses and offers everything needed to to grow and manage an online presence, from domain names and website builders to complete eCommerce solutions. The company has earned a place as the world’s #1 ICANN-accredited domain registrar by delivering world-class products at competitive prices and supporting them with industry-best service, delivered 24/7/365. Go Daddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar and Web hosting provider * More than 54 million domain...
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
