Aw crud. Google disabled the "Miserable Failure" search joke...and Googlebombs in general.

[WilliamPitt]

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,2002708,00.html

Read me first

'Miserable failure' Bush rehabilitated as Google steps in to defuse the Googlebombs

Nicholas Carr
Thursday February 1, 2007
The Guardian

If you've had occasion to do a Google search on the phrase "miserable failure" over the past few years, you've probably found that the top result is the official site for George W Bush's presidency. It's there because of a campaign of "Googlebombing". A lot of people wrote the term "miserable failure" on their personal home pages and then linked it to the White House site. Google's search engine dutifully made the connection.

But last week, after years of taking a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward Googlebombing, Google decided to put an end to the popular sport. It incorporated into its search engine a Googlebomb-sniffing algorithm that somehow manages to identify and neutralise any concerted effort to skew search results for a word or phrase.

Googlebombing was amusing at first, but it got old fast. So I'm perfectly happy that Google is giving it the heave-ho. It's like scrubbing graffiti off the side of a subway car.

But there's a deeper story here, and it lies in Google's explanation for why it finally decided to defuse Googlebombs. You might assume the company was acting out of a desire to present better results, or to counter internet vandalism, or simply to serve the public interest. But you'd be wrong.

What drove Google to act was its fear that Googlebombing was tarnishing its painstakingly controlled image.

...more...

[Ian David]

1. "Santorum" still works. n/t

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Google has become a corporate/ political entity, most likely to our detriment.

It's shedding its last remnants of egalitarianism and embracing corporatism. :-( MKJ

[Kurovski]

3. It still won't change the reality that Bush is a miserable failure.

Chicken-shit, snooper-freak Google.

[radfringe]

4. but if you use the google image function

and type in miserable failure you get a "brazillion" pics of bush


http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=miserable+failure&btnG=Search+Images

[PDittie]

5. Just stop using it.

Like any selfish greedy person -- err, corporation, they are evolving to the maximization of their own self-interests (which is to say to the detriment of others).

There's plenty of good search engines out there. Use them instead.

[MikeDuffy]

6. Could part of the change be that the bio link page has changed?

I gather that the bio used to be www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html, but now it appears to be http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html.

If all the links were updated, perhaps the googlebomb would be restored -- at least until the link was changed again.