Play Things

The unbearable truthiness of Google Suggest

Earlier today @rashmid sent me an image via Twitter. About Twitter:

This is a grab from a simple Google Search page. Type in a term into the box and Google automatically tries to guess what you are looking for. Mostly based on content online and previous search histories. It throws up a list with a corresponding estimate of how many results are available for each suggested search term. As you can there are a fair number of people who look upon Twitter less than favourably.

This suddenly sparked a thought in my head. Isn't Google's suggestions then something of a clandestine barometer of public sentiment on various topics? Will we get such wonderful insight into other popular topics if we did the same, i.e. type in a term followed by "is" and a space and then wait for the search engine to suggest?

PlayThings is proud to showcase the outcome of our comprehensive review of several such popular concepts using the windsock of social sentiment that is Google suggestions:

p.s. Not one of the images have been doctored. They are exactly as they appeared on my browser. Do play around with Google suggestions yourself and drop us a line if you find any hilarious ones.

p.p.s. AR Rahman IS malayalee

p.p.p.s. Gordon Brown is my shepherd as well.