Now, after I started this post, I found a similar post of all Bullshit Captchas lists.  While that list is now a bit dated, it’s still pretty good.  In that post, there are some serious captchas and some obvious jokes. I don’t want to spoil it, but here is a preview:

Yes.  They think you are very smart.  This flies in the face of all consumer marketing.

Google Bad Password Gmail CAPTCHA

You have to be a fucking savant to solve some of these perplexing puzzles.  It’s got to the point where I dread the challenge.  I never thought that I would be intimidated by a password recovery process but Google puts up a monster fight sometimes.

“Letters are not case-sensitive.”

Well fuckin’ thanks Googz.  Why not just include characters from Zapf Dingbats why you’re at it?  Who can solve this shit? Google is supposedly geared for the masses, right?  Grandma’s supposed to crack this shit?  Bitch can barely see much less cock her head the required degrees laterally to attempt to decipher this Enigma competitor.

“Dosisbalmi?”  What the hell?  (nope, that wasn’t correct)

“Dosisba” + “Lockness monster silhouette” + “mi?”

I gave up on that one and will try again tomorrow after a lot of coffee and I’ll cycle through a few.  I think I’ll get it next round.

Got a link to a supreme bullshit captcha? Paste it in the comments below.  Or Don’t.

Really?

The way that info was framed in these articles seems pretty fishy, “top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN” seems mis-representative because it is stated without any reference to what the other sources are or what percentage of the traffic to these portals this represents. (my guess is that Google search has historically driven little traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN on purpose) It’s great headline fodder though, and that’s what drives pageviews.

Perspective

Of course, if you know your current web history then you know that Microsoft owns a percentage of Facebook in a deal that gave “Microsoft control over the placement of banner ads on Facebook outside the U.S., where about 60% of Facebook’s 49 million active users reside. Microsoft had already reached agreements to sell U.S. banner ads for Facebook through 2011” So no big surprise that Facebook is sending traffic to MSN.

To be clear, I don’t mean to be a Google fanboy. My main grievance is with a bs metric that is driving all kinds of attention. “Google, which has profited handsomely from directing Web surfers to their destinations during the past decade, was third with 7 percent, just behind e-commerce site eBay, which had 7.61 percent. MySpace was fourth with just under 2 percent.” Is pretty useless without demonstrating the existence or lack of a trend, segments, or comparison.

This is coming from Compete’s director of online media and search – Compete, a “Web measurement firm”. S0 someone who is versed in web measurement knows a meaningless comparison. Alternate headline (per graph below) “Everything Interesting Happened Last Year”.

Facebook Approaching Google… Last Year

Better question: How is Compete doing?

In fairness I think the way that Buzz was rolled out is probably a good sign that Google is recognizing FB as a competitor. (It integrates with Twitter and Flickr… but not FB) Facebook’s privacy settings prevent Google from collecting information the way it does on Twitter, Flickr, Reader, and other sites. This is tremendously important distinction

There Were Also Some Great Points

“People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends’ recommendations or their friends’ activities,” said Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc., a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services. “That’s one of the big trends we started picking up on probably four or five months ago.”

That might be part of the reason that Google is now ranking real time search results and showing results from your social circle in the SERPs – whether that will have any positive impact on the user experience or not is another question, but it definitely demonstrates that Google has some concerns in that area.

@dberkowitz probably makes the best point when he states the following ”But there’s always been one downside to search,” he said. “Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google’s biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers’ Web usage.”

An Endorsement for Gigya?

So I hope I’m fair and balanced and I’m not saying that this article didn’t make some good points, but it read a little bit like a “better than paid” endorsement for Gigya, “a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services” hopefully this will get some search traffic otherwise I might “have to consider what companies like Gigya offer – social-media optimization.” This is certainly timed right for Gigya though, and we can follow their lead by launching webinars to coincide with mentions in conventional news and leveraging the audiences of prominent thought leaders like Jeremiah Owyang

retweet much?

Eric Werner on Linkedin

Twitter: Eric Werner

Hey Google…

Can I ask you something?

What. the fuck. are you. DOING?

Seriously…you are releasing so many SHITTY products in such rapid succession, I don’t even have time to wrap my head around them before you’re already blowing my mind with your next epic failure. Look at this:

9/23/2009 – Google Sidewiki: Great news, everyone! Now ANYBODY can leave comments on any page of your website, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

11/17/2009 – Site hierarchies in SERPs: We don’t like your URLs so we made up our own for you! No, you can’t opt out!

12/04/2009 – Personalized search for everyone: We track everyone who uses your computer and then save that data on your hard drive!

12/07/2009 -Realtime Search: Now when someone searches Google for your name, we show them your Twitter feed! If it’s not a protected account, then OBVIOUSLY you want the whole fucking world to know everything you’re saying at all times!

1/19/2010 – Synonyms:  We know what you MEANT to search for, so we just went ahead and included pages that don’t even contain your search query, because obviously you’re too fucking retarded to say what you mean!

1/22/2010 – Answer Highlighting in Search Results: Now there’s no reason for anyone to actually visit your page, because we already told them everything!

1/27/2010 – Search is Getting More Social: We know who you’ve been talking to, we know what you’ve been saying, we know what websites you visit, we know everything about you…and now we’re using that information to boost the rankings of content that your sister’s ex-boyfriend’s roommate’s old babysitter wrote! No, you can’t opt out!

2/09/2010 – Google Buzz: We read all your emails and chat sessions and formed a list of people you talk to the most often. And then…we showed everyone! No, you can’t opt out! Hey everybody…guess who this guy’s been talking to!!

And I’m sure there’s more. The point is…nobody wants what you’re shoveling! Who is telling you otherwise? Seriously…where are you pulling your test groups from, the morgue? I don’t understand why you continue to “innovate” solutions to problems that no one has. Does ANYBODY want to see Twitter content in their search results? If you’re looking for something to solve, how about addressing some of the problems that people have actually been complaining about:

• There’s no easy way to track search rankings.
• There’s no easy way to opt out of dates appearing in SERP snippets–and your algorithm for detecting relevant dates BLOWS.
• You give us different estimates of indexed pages, depending on how/where we ask:
  • site:www.seomofo.com – 207
  • site:www.seomofo.com (100 results per page) – 33
  • site:www.seomofo.com (show omitted results) – 35
  • Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps, Indexed URLs – 42
  • (Actual number of pages – 31)
• Your customer service department doesn’t exist.

You used to follow the mantra “launch early and iterate,” but somewhere along the line, you seem to have switched to “launch everything and ignore the obvious.” Is this how you intend to compete with Apple and Microsoft–quantity over quality? How long before we can expect the Google MP3 player to launch?

Here’s a tip…just because 10 million people use Buzz the day it’s released…doesn’t mean it’s a success. All that means is you’ve abused your position in one market to force your way into another. Gee…that sounds familiar…what other big corporation used their dominance in one area to bully the whole World into using a horrible, horrible piece of shit?

Here’s your success right here. You beat Microsoft AND Apple! Congrats!

As it turns out he has a habit of being a public shit for brains that likes to publish email conversations that he has with people on a regular basis to belittle them and stroke his own fucking dic.. erm.. I mean ego.

Anyway, since that’s the way he rolls, I thought I’d publish his emails to me so you can judge for yourselves if this guy is an asshole or not…

Email 1 from David Thorne;

Really? http://www.27bslash6.com

My response;

Yes really; http://www.stockxpert.com/browse_image/view/2322901 – it’s on iStock Photos as well (another stock photo site). If yer designer told you it was his or you owned the rights… methinks he was full of… well… bullshit :0)

I’m sorry if you were lead to believe otherwise…. don’t shoot the messenger bro

Email 2 from David Thorne;

Not a problem. It is your choice to look like you trying to ride on the coat-tails of more successful sites. As the design of your site is slightly below that of which a primary school child could do, it hardly matters, just thought you would be embarrassed.- Good luck with that.

I left it at that….

Ain’t he a piece of work?

I didn’t bother responding because there really wasn’t any point in doing so… especially since I can do it HERE… He does like pissing on people in public you know (go read the first post on his blog)… so we’ll put the response here for him;

Hey Dave… why don’t you take you fucking head outta yer ass and grow the fuck up! Ok? I mean, seriously. If you are so goddamned worried about yer image/brand then maybe you shouldn’t be such a fucking cheap skate and actually BUY the rights to the image. Ya know? Or shit… spend a few bucks and commission yer own. I don’t give a shit WHO you think you are… because I’d not heard of you nor your site before now (seen the spider thing, but that don’t mean shit bro). So piss off.

We started this site on a whim… it’s about the content not the fucking design!

Oh and hey… looks like mister ego-head has some more people to send arrogant little piss-ant emails to – (click here)

Live by the sword….

So my friends.. I leave it to you. Who is David Thorne? Blogging maverick? Or ego centric fuck nuts that lives in his sociopathic dream world where we’re all just looking to ride his coat tails?

Sound off in the comments!