Slashdot Mirror
OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE <3 <3 <3!!!
Chapium writes "Google Romance (Beta) is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search(TM), get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for.
With this addtion has Google gone too far with its data collection?"
Oh, wait...
My new blog
Oh no, my soul mate is 404 Not Found.
I once had a signature.
Anyone else in?
This was such a funny coincidence with Slashdot's new girly style. :-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
How cute is this? Could Google get any more useful?
fools day
With this addtion has Google gone too far with its data collection?
Even the April Fool's jokes have Google flamebait.
Ok, time to get april 1st started:
Story contains "OMG": 1 shot
Story contains Google, MS: get a beer
Zonk says something foolish: shot of beer
SLOW DOWN DAAMMIY!!11ToO muCh..1!!lk21;l1k
Now we really understand why google has collected so much data on everyone! They weren't doing Evil, just trying to get everyone dates.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
Imagine if Google profiled you by your Gmail account and web-searches, blogger entries, etc and was able to use this information to do a psychometric profile of you. It could then compare this with other people's profiles and suggest members of the opposite sex that it thinks you would most like!
I don't know whether this would be cool or damn scarey. What's worse is that the only thing standing in the way of this happening is programmer time. What's amazing is how effectively we've created 1984 and in how little time we've done it.
Simon
Google Romance users who find one another via Soulmate Search(TM) may then select the Contextual Dating option, which offers an all-expenses-paid romantic evening in exchange for viewing contextually relevant advertising throughout the course of the users' date (learn more). "Our internal projections say Contextual Dating is going to be unbelievably huge, just a total cash cow," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in prepared remarks placed into the notes section of an executive PowerPoint presentation and intended solely for internal use but promptly leaked onto the web and then roundly mocked on Digg and Slashdot.
"I'm getting lucky"
3. What is Soulmate Search?
Here on the Google Romance team, we follow the philosophy "Don't be medieval," so we brought only the latest psychographic and search algorithms to bear on the problem of hooking up our users. First you fill out an extensive personal profile carefully designed by a team of both married and single Google engineers for the express purpose of gathering and analyzing romantic information. Then you fill out an equally obscure and elaborate profile describing various attributes of the person with whom you wish to spend the rest of your life and click 'Search Romance.' It's that simple.
4. Really? It's that simple?
Well, you know how when you do a regular Google web search, you get back uncannily accurate search results?
5. Usually. But sometimes they're a little off.
Yeah, that's why our early testers thought that Soulmate Search's "Did you really mean...?" feature came in very handy.
6. What is Contextual Dating?
It's a free date plus the added accrued value of the past decade's worth of post-Industrial Age online marketing genius, all tied into a real-time, video-based, GPS-tracked, psychographically astute and environmentally pervasive promotional system.
7. Come again?
You see ads that might make your date better.
8. Such as?
Flowers. Music. Personal advice. E-greetings. Later on, depending on how our long-term opt-out natural-language-based monitoring system thinks things are going, personalized thank you notes, romantic getaway offers, various intimate pharmaceutical come-ons, engagement and bridal wear catalogs - you know the drill.
9. What if I don't want to see contextual dating ads?
Don't use the product.
10. What do you mean when you say Google Romance is a beta product?
What do you mean when you ask us what we mean when we say Google Romance is a beta product? It is what is it, okay? It's new, it's probably still buggy, which is to say that yes, by using this product now you conceivably are setting yourself up for a disastrous outcome - but on the other hand, you might also be on the verge of thrilling to an experience that will transform your very existence and only could have come about because you took this step, right here, right now. You're online; take a chance. We may never pass this way again. Carpe diem. The world could, like, end tomorrow, you know? Gather ye rosebuds while --
11. Okay, okay, I'll try it.
Great, babe, great.
12. So, um - how do we begin?
Just sit back and relax. And say, we're curious - what's your sign?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
What's amazing is how effectively we've created 1984 and in how little time we've done it.
;-)
Depending on you how you look at that claim, one might say we've actually been quite slow though.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
would welcome our Google overlords, if only it wasn't the 1st of April. (always wanted to say that :P)
"People's problem is not that they are mortal, but that they are suddenly mortal" Terry Pratchett
Who's that terrific babe on google's romance front-page? Maybe another cogent reason for the average heterosexual geek to want to work at google?
In any case: ASL && more pix??
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
For those of you having difficulty with the above emoticons, take note they can be read in either of 2 ways:
OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE less-than-three less-than-three less-than-three!!!
-- Which means on a scale of 10, this site only rates a "3"
OMG GOOGLE ROMANCE conical-penis-with-balls, conical-penis-with-balls, conical-penis-with-balls
-- Which makes no sense whasoever, must be some kind of April fool's joke.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
My Google Soulmate Search found an overweight girl living in her father's garage with orange cheeto stained fingers sucking down a Diet Mountain Dew posting messages on /. about how April Fools Day stories just aren't funny.
She is my delicate flower.
search rsults for "racebit's soul mate". Displaying 1-20 of about 5,000,000,000,000
I always knew i was had a pimp within...
"[Because] Dating is a search problem"
It keeps matching me up with a Level 20 White Wizard of Hagrath. I'm a guy, I don't want to date another guy, even if it IS a wizard!
Friendly fire isn't!
I'm really impressed with the latent homophobia in nearly every single 'aprilfools' post so far today. The 'gay' tag? Is that necessary? It's really not funny.
Maybe you could put 'fag' next time instead? OMG, like that would be SOOOO FUNNY!!!
Damn. I tried to use the search and it gave me an error. =(
I guess I'll try again tomorrow.
Paris Hilton would be a busy girl.
liqbase
1984 was more of the opposite sort of direction...
I really hate that the term "Gay" is being used to tag all of these April Fools posts, but in this case it's actually appropriate:
If everyone on Slashdot signed up for a dating service, the only ones who would find compatible mates would be the gay members.
Database Capacity Exceeded (again)
.. :(
That's just great - once again, the sheer volume of our users' thirst for our products has exceeded our capacity to quench it, therefore, deja vu, this service is not available at this time (at least not to you).
I wish I had registered a little sooner
Now I will never find romance !!
Anyway, I'll stick with good old carbon-14 dating.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
April 1st is such a pain in the ass.
Yahoo News Flash thing
LinuksCentertsentr (LCC), proven leader in open software distribution announced release of the revolutionary distribution - SEXLinux http://sexlinux.com/. Development team of this product, and outsourced community specialists attempted to maximally consider the preferences of the strong half of humanity. Approach used was derived from the words of another creator - "Software is Like Sex - It's Better When It's Free". And creators of SEXLinux exerted all efforts so that the portion of sex in this distributive would be to maximum imaginable capacity along with versatile approach and scalability. Sponsored by http://www.google.com/romance/
Thank you Google!!!
I have been wanting this soooo bad. To google up my next 'lets have a dinner buddy', my next 'let's go watch this movie buddy', my next 'let's fuck, baby fuck buddy'.
Let me understand how this works...
I can google horny sex partners, of given parameters in short distance of my zip code, for any given night, right?
Thank you Google!!!
Theoretically yes, a google search for a romantic partner would work. But the matches would be so perfect as to eliminate The thrill of romantic conquest!
8. Such as?
Flowers. Music. Personal advice. E-greetings. Later on, depending on how our long-term opt-out natural-language-based monitoring system thinks things are going, personalized thank you notes, romantic getaway offers, various intimate pharmaceutical come-ons, engagement and bridal wear catalogs you know the drill.
+------------
| Ads by Goooooogle
|
| V 1 A G R A - En1arge yuor pen1$ n0w
|
| Advertise on this site
+------------
Signature has left the building.
You're obviously not a very good April's Fool jokester since everyone can plainly see you're not the first poster.
http://www.google.com/romance/faq.html
It's a satire of Google's own business model. Their contextual ads and their Beta products.
And it's biting. I'm just reminded why I like Google.
6. What is Contextual Dating?
It's a free date plus the added accrued value of the past decade's worth of post-Industrial Age online marketing genius, all tied into a real-time, video-based, GPS-tracked, psychographically astute and environmentally pervasive promotional system.
7. Come again?
You see ads that might make your date better.
8. Such as?
Flowers. Music. Personal advice. E-greetings. Later on, depending on how our long-term opt-out natural-language-based monitoring system thinks things are going, personalized thank you notes, romantic getaway offers, various intimate pharmaceutical come-ons, engagement and bridal wear catalogs - you know the drill.
9. What if I don't want to see contextual dating ads?
Don't use the product.
10. What do you mean when you say Google Romance is a beta product?
What do you mean when you ask us what we mean when we say Google Romance is a beta product? It is what is it, okay? It's new, it's probably still buggy, which is to say that yes, by using this product now you conceivably are setting yourself up for a disastrous outcome - but on the other hand, you might also be on the verge of thrilling to an experience that will transform your very existence and only could have come about because you took this step, right here, right now. You're online; take a chance. We may never pass this way again. Carpe diem. The world could, like, end tomorrow, you know? Gather ye rosebuds while --
What's amazing is how effectively we've created 1984 and in how little time we've done it.
:)
1984? Dude we are way off schedule... Do you by any means work at microsoft?
Just while all this pinkness and cute pictures of fluffy little animals has managed to stirred up long abandoned faint hopes of locating a perfect soulmate, your preposterous prank has shattered it all!!! All I tell you!!! Why God why?!?! *whimper*
Mine is 402: Payment required
think about Google can get all your search histories, so it is possible to find a romance just by comparing search histories, or the clicks you had. If you search more for porn, probably you will find a bitch:)
Megite: What's Happening Right Now
After exhaustive analysis it has been determined that you want the one with the big boobs
would someone please explain me what OMG stands for ?
i have mod points today. anyone who attempts to be humorous will get their stuff ruined.
Since all these AF stories are getting tagged 'gay'... here's a little joke to fit the context.
So this kid is at a ballgame, and goes to take a whiz. As he's standing at the urinal, he loooks over and sees a cowboy standing next to him..
Kid: Hey mister, are you a real cowboy??
Cowboy: I sure am son, would you like to wear my hat?
The kid happily accepts, and puts on the cowboy hat. Just as the kid is finishing up, a man in a sailor suit walks in and stands next to him..
Kid: Hey mister, are you a real sailor?
Sailor: I sure am son, do you want me to suck your dick?
Kid: (Hastily grabbing for the hat) Oh... No... I'm not a real cowboy, I was just wearing the hat!
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Google folks would have to be proficient in a lot of languages to make that happen. Otherwise, you'll be seeing something like: Romance Beta. Available ONLY for English-speakers :-)
"Post multiple profiles with a bulk upload file, you sleaze"
It's nice to see that Google is still catering to the hardcore user.
Oh, wait, that didn't come out right *at*all*.
What you describe isn't anything like 1984. In fact, it's the complete opposite! 1984 was all about the elimination of choice, and even the elimination of the existence of choice. Suggesting dating choices for people by analyzing their information isn't really Big Brotherly thing.
Google date just announced? I thought thats why the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button was designed. Its all clear. Always wondered why when searching for some idiot who would actually shag me, the result was generally the white house George W. Bush bio page.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Of course it's homophobia. The fact that a slur is unfortunately trendy doesn't make it less of a slur. Would you argue that to "jew someone down" isn't anti-Semitic merely because the expression was in common use?
The expression "that's so gay" is considered the universal insult in American schools, something that would be readily rejected as vulgar if applied to any demographic besides gays.
Unless you read right-to-left, <3 = "ball sac".
This is Google's way of introducing a dating service without it looking like it was their idea. After all, it's embarassing.
Google builds Google Romance.
They're ambivalent about introducing it.
Product Manager has the brilliant idea to introduce it as a joke, monitor interest, and later claim, "Oh, it started as a joke, but people really wnated it, so we did it."
except, you know, how they say it's an april fools joke
wait...
It seems like slashcode removes the from the title of the article in the title tag in the HTML. Probably not the gravest bug, but still :) You'd never expect something useful coming out of 1. April, but there you go.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
They should have a "Get laid" button, me thinks.
It's called Google Date-a-Base
Invite a friend... "Would you like to be a part of this romance MFF?"
This April Fools joke wouldn't have happened if Google had a serious interest in online dating -- it wouldn't make sense to ridicule a business concept and then enter the business.
Match.com and competitors are breathing a sigh of relief today ...
We'd all get women who are bitter, surly, and hostile to men.
Well, yes...
But what if that is the actual joke?
Ignore this signature. By order.
I searched for "Arrogant Prick" and it returned my own profile as a result. WTF??
"Well you're not Fiona Apple, and if you're not Fionna Apple, I don't give a rat's ass."
APRIL FOOLS!
sic
BABERANK
-Oliver / TreasureTunes.com
It will be called Snoogle!
It was decided to keep the *oogle theme going after G-male, G-Female and G-Spot were all rejected.
or it could be something called strategy
Presuming it thinks you like the opposite sex. Better cut back on searching shemale zoophile sites, everyone...
What's worse is that the only thing standing in the way of this happening is programmer time.
No, what's worse is that programmers likely to have the requisite time are correspondingly likely to have the motivation to work on the project.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
especially the bit about a bouquet of peonies.
wait until it's no longer a "suggestion" as required by laws for the "security" and future "well-being" of the country. Such a Brave New World!
Preposterous. Bigotry is often directed toward groups of people, an individual of which the bigot has never met. It's much harder to hate gay/les/bi/trans people when you take the time to meet your gay neighbor and get to know them as an individual and not just as a faceless member of a group you've heard bad things about.
Minority groups are under no obligation to hide their identities to escape the prejudices of other people. Nobody should be forced into the closet just so that others won't have to confront their own preconceptions.
Government.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Dammit Google, you were supposed to boost my Gmail to 5GB on April Fool's, not this!
And right under the article, it says.... - Ads by Google - Think about it a second.
noone's going to mod parent +1 informative?
-------
Incite and flee.
actually, in brave new world, children were made in test tubes and people could have whoever they wanted without commitment.
I gave three examples, but there are many more. When straight people want to marry, they're being responsible citizens, but when gay people do the same, they're "destroying the institution of marriage". When straight couples have children or adopt it's to produce a loving family, but when gay couples do the same it's "using innocent children to score political points".
Again, all of which are just as often applied to any of the other marriages I listed and you carefully ignored. The simple fact of the matter is that assholes are simply assholes. There're always going to be people who dislike what's different. This does NOT make gays special and they need to lose the idea that they are.
How else is progress ever achieved? Without agitation and political activism, women wouldn't have the vote, blacks would still be slaves, and the US would still be a British colony.
"Agitation and activism" is no the same thing as "bitching loudly then whining when it bites you in the ass."
Lot of people are afraid of change and fight it ferociously. But here in Massachusetts we're all discovering that having married gay/lesbian neighbors does nothing to threaten our own marriages.
That's all well and good for you. Really. What about other "non-standard" marriages/relationships? Are your people that accepting of them too? If not, then the whole state can kiss my ass for gross hypocracy.
When was the last time you heard about anybody trying to prevent Asians or Baptists from being able to marry? Gays aren't asking for anything special, they're asking -- or demanding -- that they not be denied the same freedoms everybody else has.
Would you remain silent if you or those you care about were legally treated as sub-human? Me neither!
I understand that you're disturbed by all the attention paid to gay issues, but you still haven't given any reasons to justify the notion that gays don't deserve the same rights you have.
Being unpartnered, I was so excited when I saw the link foe Google romance. I was willing ot be bombared with advertising tif it meant finding my real-life superhero -- and not having to pay for it, to boot. My heart was beating faster than a speeding bullet at the prospect that this network was going to help me get my loving arms around Captain Manhero. I went to register, and got the message that THIS IS A PRANK! I was so cheesed off I wanted to throw things at my monitor. Oh, the disappointment. Who else thought it was genuine and then got miffed upon learning it was a spoof?
I'm not trolling, just trying to convince you that another group's attainment of full equality doesn't harm you. It might threaten your comfort with the status quo, but change happens and progress is a good thing!
No. The definition of marriage has changed dramatically and historically has often had nothing at all to do with religion. In many times it was arranged by the parents as strictly a business proposition or by heads of state to form international alliances. Polygamy has been common in many societies and was practiced by major biblical figures. In some places children could be married. Interracial marriage was long forbidden in the US.
Religious marriage is totally distinct from civil marriage, the latter being what federal & state legislation regulates and what activists on both sides are trying to affect. When someone's married by a justice of the peace, there's no religious authority blessing the union. Couples who have that done sometimes also have a separate church ceremony.
I agree with you that the state has no business telling the Catholic Church whom they must marry, but no laws attempt to do that. It's up to Catholics alone to change the practices of their own church. But it's improper for religious authorities to attempt to prevent other people from participating in legal civil marriages.
There are people out there fighting to keep their families together in the face of legal persecution which in many cases allows their children to be taken away solely because their parents are gay, and you're complaining that you're the real victim because it's okay to offend you? Do you know how bizarre that sounds?
Once again, there are people who are denied entire categories of basic human rights that you take for granted, and your main concern is that you're no longer as free to disseminate animosity against them. I agree that political correctness has a dark side that can stifle legitimate dialogue, but I wish you could look past that and agree that gay/les/bi/trans people ought to have all the same freedoms, rights, and responsibilities that everyone else has.
As an aside, if you're ever invited to a gay/lesbian couple's wedding or civil union, go! You might be pleasantly surprised to witness a very warm, loving, pro-family event. :)