This morning my brother told me to google “zerg rush,” which, to anyone who doesn’t play Starcraft, means complete gibberish. Still unsure if it was work-friendly or if Zerg was a word for some kind of freaky porn, I decided to take the risk and do it anyway. For the ladies in the house who don’t dork out on the regsies: zerg rush is a Starcraft reference for battling insectoids.
When you google ‘zerg rush,’ the O’s from Google’s logo launch an attack on your search results, eating them up unless you have extraordinary index finger strength to click them all away before they do any damage. Even if this is true, you will still lose, I don’t care how good you are at Starcraft. When the deed is done, you have the option to submit, share, and compare your score with others.
This is the first instance of interactive search engines that I’ve ever seen, and it means exciting things for the future. What if you were to launch a completely interactive search engine? What is the intention and reward from doing this? Well, in Google’s case, it does a few things: 1. They’ve pioneered the interactive search engine style, claiming it as theirs. 2. They will draw even more people to their site while this goes viral, attracting fringe audiences, gamers, and nerds. 3. They can test out interaction on google to see how well it does, how many people it draws, and as a result, it serves as a prototype for future interactive implementation. So, it could and probably will be a huge moneymaker for them.
Google didn’t really need to test this out, since it’s pretty obvious that adding interactivity to any commercial product will take you straight to the bank. We can’t help it-we’re a curious species and we’ve been wanting to push random buttons since we were toddlers (how often did you argue with siblings over who gets to push the elevator button…?). But I’m glad they did, because they are giving us a taste of what’s yet to come, and I can’t wait to see more.
L.R.'s Bizarre Bazaar 