Bill Matthies

Note to Self: Must Talk to Sponge Bob
March 28, 2007

I bought a Britannica encyclopedia in the mid ’70’s, mostly because I thought that would make me look smarter than I actually am. Whether or not it did is debatable, but what is not debatable is the amount of use I got from them. Not much. I don’t know if it was a matter of being too lazy to look things up, not needing to know anything or already knowing all there was to know (I suppose we can eliminate that last one). Whatever the reason, I didn’t do much with them other than make sure they were prominently displayed in my home.

In contrast, like most of us, I now use search engines all the time and am fascinated by what comes up; in particular the number of sites for each search. Let me give you a few examples of search terms and results:

Term# of Results

Shoe laces 1,830,000
Bass fishing 1,560,000
Horticultural 10,400,000
Chrome bumpers 1,370,000
Entomology 9,340,000
Jelly doughnuts 827,000

More than 10,000,000 for “horticultural” is not surprising but almost a million for” jelly doughnuts,” almost 2 million for “shoe laces?”Who knew?I suppose there is a world for all of us, including chrome-bumper aficionados.

What about closer to home in the CE industry? How about 12,500,000 for “surround sound,” 37,700,000 for “vehicle navigation” or 38,800,000 for “plasma TV”? Take THAT jelly doughnuts and shoe laces! THAT’S what I’m talkin’ ’bout! Almost twice the results for flowers and bugs combined!

Then you think about it more and wonder, can there really be all that much stuff to know about all these things? I’m going to write myself a Post-It Note (97,400,000) reminding me to consult an expert source such as SpongeBob (3,450,000) or better still, my mid ‘70’s Britannica encyclopedia, a phrase which generates a mere 15,100 Web pages, which is still probably more real pages than what is in the books themselves.

Posted by Bill Matthies on March 28, 2007 | Comments (0)