Simon's Laws of Google

[simont]

Simon's First Law: If you are searching for a particular type of thing, and you Google for various phrases and none of them comes up with anything particularly helpful, and you eventually give up and post on a public forum with a question along the lines of

Does anybody know where I can find a low-cost reconfigurable sponginator? I've looked

Comments

[dennyd]

Did you mean: low-cost reconfigurable ponginator?
Oh, of course, how foolish of me.

...

Wtf is a ponginator?!?

[simont]

I wondered who'd be the first to try that :-) It was a photo-finish between you and drswirly, who notified me through other channels.

[senji]

It was my first thought, but I was at lunch at the time.

Hmm, why have comments stopped being in GMT?

[geekette8]

Too true, all of it. Except that normally the public post will not actually include the phrases you tried in Google and rejected, so as to make you look even more stupid.

On a slight tangent

[ex_lark_asc]

I'm very thankful for the fact that my "incluide anti-googlebot headers in all homepages" tactic seems to work, as well as that I'm vastly eclipsed by the former US Assistant Secretary for Defence. I don't seem to be desperately googleable under either version of my name..

[acheron_hades]

So very, very true :)

[tombee]

... Annoying.

Although it does pose the question of what counts as public, and how does google know? What if you write out the message and then post it to a single confidant? or two? or just your cat? Having brought this matter to the public I feel that you have a responsibility, nay duty to research exactly where the dividing line between public and private actually lies. And get funding. Always get funding.