Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales once said ‘if it’s not on Google, it doesn’t exist’. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer refers to it as the most important tool on the Internet. Gone are the days of a good old-fashioned debate amongst friends. Now if you’re arguing over the year that Abraham Lincoln died, you will Google it (1865). If you want to know how many moons orbit Saturn, Google it (60). If you want to know how many times Elizabeth Taylor was married…well, you get the picture (eight times to seven different men).

Although most people now use Google for, well, everything, sometimes I do question its viability as a source. If you don’t agree with me, go ahead and enter some random terms into their search bar and take careful notice of the options that appear in the drop down box. For example, when entering the search term “why is there a”, Google suggested such options as “why is there a new Declan on Neighbours”, and the search “can a human” led to suss results like “can a human get a monkey pregnant?”. Google fail!

My biggest gripe with the rise of the Church of Google is its negative effect on traditional social events such as pub trivia. Gone are the days when one can impress friends and romantic interests with their encyclopaedic brain of random facts; now all one has to do is (say it with me) Google it. British quizmaster Scott Bray boasts that he has come up with the first pub trivia to be fully Google-proof, saying: “The trick has been to ask questions like ‘What have these three items got in common?’, and ‘Which is the odd one out?’ They are not questions which the Internet would instantly tell you”. Nice move Bray.

Whether you like it or not, the Google phenomenon is here to stay. It has been ingrained in so many different aspects of life that it has become nigh impossible to avoid it (unless of course you don your finest tin foil hat, live in the wild and only hang with animals). If you don’t know how to avoid Google…Google it.

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