I was browsing Slashdot today and happened upon an article pointing to a site that demonstrated what would happen if Google had to design its own site in order to get more hits from its own search engine. If Google designed for Google.

Let me explain. The Google search engine ranks pages based on how many occurances of a key word there are in the page, how many links it has to other pages on the same site, how recently the content has been updated, how many links it has from other sites (Digg, Furl, del.icio.us, Yahoo, etc.), and how many inbound links it has overall. Thus we have the Google PageRank search algorithm, which decides which search results are important enough to be placed at the top of a query. The downside to this is that web developers who need more traffic on their sites must go to extreme lengths to ensure that their sites show up on the first 3 pages of results for a specific query. They add needless gimmicks like feeds from blogs, partnerships with other sites to boost inbound links, and custom bookmarking tools, all of which clutter up a site's layout. So somebody, inspired in part by the "What if Microsoft designed the iPod's box art?" video, created a presentation called "What if Google had to design for Google?" It takes the pristine interface of Google and then mutilates it step-by-step in order to get a higher PageRank, tranforming it into a cramped, cluttered mess. You can find the presentation here. The "Microsoft molds the iPod into its own horrific vision" video can be found here.

Oh, and I found some nice videos on YouTube a couple days ago. One's a 3D animated short from the Vancouver Film School, and the other's a love story told through an . . . interesting medium. Enjoy.

"After Oz" by the Vancouver Film School

"How We Met" by tracecats

One last thing: Sandeep's got a blog.