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When (the online) God failed its followers

Its just a coincidence that Google and God both have the same starting letters - but sometimes for computer illiterate users of the Web, it is as much a fact.

Millions of people in the world do not know about the Web before Google. For them Google is not just a search engine but the window to the web - to permit some exaggeration - the web itself. (Doesn't that remind you of Krsna's quote from the Gita - I am the world ..)

So some such people were a couple of days back trying to log on to Facebook. Their modus operandi was search "facebook login" in Google, click the first link available. Even my father - who comes into the category of users who learnt surfing only AFTER Google - used to reach my blog. (If you thought this was incredulous, you are either a geek or a old-timer on the web who still relies on remembering URL's of sites you visit to reach them)

With my father, this had once lead to an amusing situation when he was not able to locate my blog as it had temporarily moved to #2 search result (for "Nikhil Kulkarni"). While this was quite harmless for my father, the same thing when happened to "facebook login" search term became a big problem for several users.

An article by ReadWriteWeb had temporarily replaced the Facebook homepage as the #1 search result. People hence landed on this article page, and some of them thinking that this was the new Facebook started putting in comments like:
  • I just want to log in to Facebook - what with the red color and all?
  • I was just learning,why would you mess it up?
  • This is such a mess I can't do a thing on my facebook .The changes you have made are ridiculous,I can't even login!!!!!I am very upset!!!
  • now that you have managed to mess up the whole system how do i get back to login?

While the geek community laughed loud on this matter, the blog concerned has raised a very valid question here:
If this many of them can't login to Facebook by typing that into Google and clicking on the first thing they see, it's probably not them that are wrong, it's Google.
Indeed - if so many users are now using Google to reach their sites, than remembering the URL, shouldn't Google be creating a new top result category. Any popular term will have to be associated with brands that it belongs to and a placeholder for the brand should be the "sticky" URL posted on the top?

On second thoughts, does this not make the Google homepage unchangeable? And is that something good for the web - does it not smell of socialism to freeze the Google homepage (and keep it bereft of innovations) just because some "challenged" users cannot understand how to surf the web? That's the philosophical angle to it :-)
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