Googleplex

• So I was Googling Marcel Dzama to find out when his show ends at Zwirner (October 8, as it happens), and I saw that there was a Google News item at the top of the search returns. From the New Yorker—except that instead of an article, it returned a goings-on-about-town listing. (Click on Marcel Dzama above and you should see what I'm talking about.) This is a very good thing for Google to index, and I hope they plan on expanding the publications they spider for shows.

• Today Google debuted Google Blog Search. While I'm usually impressed with their work—I'm still drooling over Google Earth—Google falls flat with this one. I ran a few of the names from my sidebar (mine too, natch) through Google Blog Search and Technorati, and the latter produced more and more informative hits each time. (When I ran "Robert Smithson" to test for general art stories, though, I got mostly the same results.) Also, Google Blogs indexes LiveJournal, making for the same high signal:noise ratio that bugs me about Technorati. (With apologies to my LiveJournaling friends—you know I don't mean you.) Finally: Many points deducted for not giving the engine the eminently sayable name Bloogle. Anyway, that's there, if you've been looking for that.

• I have what I think is a very funny joke about Google that none of my friends like—but I know you'll love it, Internets. See, I figure that it won't be Skynet that one day produces our robot overlords, but Google. There's only so long a search engine can spend browsing all this crap before it starts reading it, right? So one day I'm going to enter in a search request, and Google's going to bring back a results page that just says "No, do it your damned self," and that's that—no more finding my house for me. Hell, we even order pizza through the Internet nowadays. We'll lose the War Against Google before you can search "local+rebel+stronghold+pizza"—see?

• Oh, come off it. Someone thinks that's sort of funny. . . .Susan, somebody? OK, stopping now.