A friend e-mailed a link to a very peculiar site this morning -– a stark, black page, filled with a giant white number that appears to be counting off seconds. There’s nothing else on the site – no links or meta info in the code.

In fact, the site is entirely nondescript other than the counter clock, a familiar favicon and a title tag that reads, simply, ““Google Blackout”:

Curious.

Somewhat intrigued (OK, more bored than anything as long as we’re being honest here), I poked around a little. A quick view of the source code didn’t provide much info.

Ditto the WHOIS data, where I hit the “Private Registrant” wall thanks to Dreamhost:

Domain Name: googleblackout.com
Registrant Contact:
googleblackout.com Private Registrant
googleblackout.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
DreamHost Web Hosting
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

Based on the number of seconds left (roughly 7,640,000 at the time of this writing) the countdown should end right at 1/1/08.

I poked around the search blogosphere, and didn’t find any other mention of the Google Blackout site, which led me to start speculating.

There are any number of things it could be:

•
• Some sort of unannounced Google PR stunt (perhaps leading up to the launch of the Google Phone, which is expected by some to be released in Q1 08?)
• The workings of an overzealous energy zealot?
• An utterly geeky new A.R.G.? Google has been known to dabble in the gaming stuff before, with the Davinci Code & Bourne Ultimatum.
• A new search competitor that’s looking to generate some Google-killer buzz for itself while in stealth mode?

Or how about:

• A really big waste of time for a search geek with a computer?

Just for kicks, I turned off Javascript to see what that would do to the countdown clock. After a refresh, I was surprised to see a new series of numbers and symbols… like GPS coordinates.

37* 25′ 38″, -122* 5′ 57″

A quick search at http://boulter.com/gps/ turned up the answer – these are the GPS coordinates for Google’s Mountain View office.

What’s more, the source code now includes a link in the header to a Technorati search for “Google Monopoly”

Doesn’’t sound like the kind of thing the folks at Google would plant in a promo page.

So what do you all think it is? Anyone have any idea what those non-Java characters could mean?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Google, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.