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I saw it with my own eyes

Hashim [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, August 16, 2006
17 years ago13,390 views

My roommates were having an argument about the speed of radio waves – does it travel at the speed of light, or not?

I suggested that we look it up online, so one of my roommates opened his browser, and typed in "Google" in his Yahoo toolbar. In the search results he skipped over Yahoo's suggestion to continue searching with them, clicked through to Google, and began the search there.

I was flabbergasted. I'd heard that users will find Google through Yahoo, but I never saw it live. Also surprising is the fact that my roommate is an above average web user, who uses the net every day.

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

They do travel at the speed of light.

Why does he have a Yahoo toolbar if he uses Google?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<< Why does he have a Yahoo toolbar if he uses Google? >>

Maybe he installed Yahoo! Instant Messenger and left all those evil default options checked...?

Corsin Camichel [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

They have "the same speed" (anybody measured yet?)

Quote:
Radio waves travel at the same speed as light.

Source:
http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/propagation/em_waves/electromagnetic_waves.php

iv05an [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Your friend is a genius, a pure genius. A freaking rocket scientist! Searched for Google in Yahoo… MAN. Made my morning

Dan Litwin [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Radio waves ARE light. Just not visible. Self-propagating electromagnetic waves; in radio's case, of a low frequency.

SEO Portal [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

even worse; 'google' was the #1 search term of the AOL users.
So they were searching for google in Google itself!

http://www.seo-portal.com/aol-data-analysis-iv-where-do-people-search-for/2006/08/15/

CJ Millisock [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

lol iv05an, YOU made my morning. lol Genius, pure genius! :-)

On a more serious note: Hashim, if your friend is an above average net user, why does he have the Yahoo! Toolbar? Does he use Yahoo! as his main search engine? If so, why did he instantly go to Google to find the answer to the radio wave question?

TonyB [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

->On a more serious note: Hashim, if your friend is an above average net user, why does he have the Yahoo! Toolbar? Does he use Yahoo! as his main search engine? If so, why did he instantly go to Google to find the answer to the radio wave question?

Ah, very interesting. The plot thickens. . . :)

Tony

Demen [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Btw, just as a side note, the speed of light and hence radio waves (which are light as mentioned) is under question.

Speed of light: 299 792 458 m / s

And that's a onebox result...

Demen

dave [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

i sometimes do this when i am very lazy..

conrad [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

my parent's computer used to go to some crazy t-mobile page (their web provider had it as a default home page) with a t-mobile search box- They could tell right away that that search tool was crap, so they would search for Google on it (they had no understanding of the "Address Bar" and what it's for)- Then use google :)

Same concept, I suppose.

Oliver Yeates [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

According to overture the term Google was searched for 8,510,043 times in July 2006! I think the world is confused...

Stephen Glynn [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I googled (sorry, used Google (TM) to search for) 'how often are search terms used' and rapidly discovered Information Week of Jan. 18 2006:

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177101572

'The three top search terms have remained steady in recent months with "ebay" the search term recording the most frequent number of requests with 13,871,000 followed closely by "google" with 13,301,000. Yahoo was third with 7,997,000.

'Others, in order, were: "mapquest" with 7,431,000, "yahoo.com", 6,528,000; "pogo.com", 4,062,000; "walmart", 3,688,000, "ask jeeves", 3,389,000; "msn", 3,155,000; and "ebay.com", 3,125,000.

'Nielsen noted that "weather" was the first topical search term. It ranked 23rd. Other popular search terms were for retail and auction sites.

'"There are two types of online searchers that type a Web site's URL into a search engine rather than into the browser's address bar," said Ken Cassar, chief analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings, in a statement. "Those inexperienced enough not to appreciate the difference between the two, and those that are so experienced they have become habituated to using the search engine as their portal to the Internet." '

suppositious [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

At times, I have to *search* for Google Suggest.

When I find myself confronted with just plain Google.com, I enter
"google suggest"
and click. It's quicker than remembering the code:

/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

analysed:
/webhp? What, exactly, is the question here, I wonder?
complete=1 suggest, I presume
&hl=en home language: english, in my case

reversed:
The reverse search (if you are on Goggle Suggest and want to go to
just plain Google.com) requires entering "google." The proper address
returns , and you can click that.

Everybody's different, eh?

mark glanville [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

yet another fine example of horrific IT training. As ever people are taught how to do a specific task on a computer, rather than the basic concepts of how the computer and OS work. It's similar to how people refer to saving a file "in Word" or "in Excel" and not even beginning to comprehend the idea of files... very sad. :o(

on another note... radio waves are indeed light, and thus travel at (in the realms of conventional reality and thinking at least) the same speed as visible light. However, remember that the speed of light, "c" is the speed of light in a vacuum, and radio waves bouncing around the world don't travel through a vacuum, so they're a little slower.

mark.

Rishabh Mishra [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Yeah, I do that with other tools like sometimes when I forget the URL
of Google Webmaster Tools or Picasa Web Albums or another service
that I use but don't use enough to remember the URL.

John Krystynak [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Pay attention to Conrad's comment, everyone who doesn't use dial-up or AOL.

Most dialup users and many DSL users have branded browsers from their ISPs. There is often no address bar visible. They have learned to type URL's into the search bar on the ISPs startup page. That's the main navigation option.

It's not really a lack of training or stupidity.

In fact, I find it amusing that most techie users have never seen this setup and cannot guess why "ebay", "google", "google.com" are the top types of search queries.

iv05an [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Genius, a pure genius!!!

Sohil [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Well I just use Firefox's Address Bar (/ I'm Feeling Lucky Service)

mark glanville [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

they remove the address bar??? i'm stumped by the monumental rediculousness of that! i don't doubt that it happens, in fact it sounds exactly like the sort of thing some ISPs would do, but do they not understand how the internet works...?

Hashim [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I say "above average" but maybe I just mean that he uses the net often. He has a MySpace page, and makes calls on Skype. To me, that seemed above average.

Mysterius [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Who doesn't have a MySpace? ;)
(Answer: Me :P)
Yeah, I guess Skype does make him somewhat above average (assuming he got it all by himself).

To "suppositious": Why not just use "labs.google.com/suggest" instead?

Wow, some ISPs have browsers that don't have an address bar?!? It's insane! Don't the poor users have vanilla IE, at least?

SCJM [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I search Google News for Google...

mak [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

Hey guys don't forget that when we type some words in the address bar of Firefox it'll search using "I'm feeling lucky" google feature. So I say this is the reason (partially) of getting all those search queries for the main sites mentioned by Nielsen (quoted in the comment above) examples: google, eBay, yahoo and others...

alek [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Just don't "google" "Google" ... since then they might sue you for inappropriate use of the word as a common verb ... ;-)

Inferno [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I wonder what he had for his lunch that day.

after reading this thread I almost rolled out of my chair. :D

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