Around the world, billions awoke in terror this morning, April Fool’s Day 2019, when they realized that Google search wasn’t working — or, at least, wasn’t working the way it once did.
Search returns were presented in alphabetical order, but different search terms presented results that did not include all letters of the alphabet.
A Google spokesperson told reporters that this change was part of an effort to get in front of the Big Tech breakup talk and break up the company according to the letters of the alphabet that keyword searches began with.
“Inspired by our parent company’s name, Alphabet, we decided to switch rather than fight and boldly embrace this change in a way that was most prudent for our organization and easy to understand by our users,” the unnamed spokesperson remarked.
He went on to note, “We are so over paying fines.”
And while Google will almost certainly not be paying any fines for this switch, it does seem they run the risk of losing some of its customers and advertisers — the early reviews of the new search methodology have been less than wholly positive.
“I’m just trying to make mashed potatoes, but no matter what I enter in, I can’t get a recipe. I just keep getting results about Adirondack blue potatoes — their origin, how to grow to them. What in the world?” Hoboken New Jersey homemaker Julie Matthews noted.
Other users reported even less sensible results.
“I was looking for repairing a car engine? I ended up looking at YouTube videos of Randy’s Autoparts garageband. It’s mostly just guys banging on a car engine and singing. I don’t get it and I still don’t know how to fix my car.”
Advertisers noted being similarly perplexed, saying they weren’t even sure who to call anymore at Google or Alphabet to buy advertising time, wondering if all three companies had three different sale departments, or if it was still under one major heading.
The problems users are having, a Google executive noted, are because they are not searching right.
The mashed potatoes woman, for example, was typing in “cooking mashed potatoes” which means she was being serviced by Alp, the new Google subdivision that covers A-K. As a result, it could not find “mashed” or “potatoes,” which are housed in Fab, the new Google subdivision for L-Q, or “recipes” which would be under the new subdivision ET, the home of R-Z.
“If she had typed in recipe: mashed potatoes, she would have done, much, much better,” the unnamed executive noted.
Google assures users that the new search system will work as well as the older system … once users get used to phrasing their searches correctly. The process will take time, they noted, but given that the other choice open to consumers is pretty much to switch to Bing, company executives say they are not now, nor would they ever be, worried about Bing.
When asked for comment on Google’s move to get ahead of regulations, several lawmakers seemed pleased, even somewhat surprised at the proactive move on the search giant’s part. However, presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren could not be reached for comment. The Senator, according to sources, got lost on the way to an Iowa campaign stop when an attempt to search for an address with new Google caused her to become lost in a cornfield.
This story was written as part of PYMNTS’ annual April Fools’ Day edition, all in the spirit of good fun. Any resemblance to real news is purely coincidental. We hope you enjoyed it.
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