Having Google Trouble?

I was shocked to find that Google was down this afternoon. After looking into it, it seems that there’s some kind of email virus that scans email domains in people’s address book and then uses search engines to find valid addresses at those domain names. BBC has just picked up the story and SlashDot picked it up around 1. Without Google to search, I found myself lost. I hadn’t used Yahoo to do a search in about three years and felt uncomfortable doing so. It’s so strange that we hardly even know web addresses any more, just as cell phones have eliminated the need to memorize phone numbers, Google has eliminated the need to memorize addresses (as well as just about any other piece of information).

July 26, 2004