What if there was no Google search?

We all know how much stuff is on the net, like billions of pages of information. The challenge is finding what you are looking for. Google was incorporated in 1998 and became the top search engine a few years later. Since then, people around the world rely on Google search to find the needles in the cyber-haystacks of the Internet. However, as we have become more and more dependent on the net for everything we do every day (except for the oxygen we breath and the water we drink), our dependency on Google has become something of an essential service.

What would we do without it? Could the world survive without Google search? Do you know who Melky Cabrera is?

Google, of course, is a profit-based non-evil company that makes money linking advertisers to search requests. If you search for shoes or shotguns, Google will provide ads and custom links based on your search queries. This is targeting your interests to retailers who want to sell you their stuff. They pay Google for the link between your search and their products and services. This is a great, volume business, ever-expanding as the net grows and grows.

What would happen if this relationship between Google search and pay-per-click sales disappeared tomorrow? Should you buy a Bumbo baby seat?

First of all, you would have to go out more and wander stores and communities for stuff you need. Nothing would be delivered to your door with just a few clicks. You would have to compare prices for similar products from various retailers and then make a purchase, drag it home and use it. You may not even know a terrific new product even exists, so you couldn't buy it. You would have to search for stuff by physical effort. It would take a lot of time. A LOT OF TIME!

Sure, the net would still exist but without an ability to search for specific stuff, you would be forced to re-visit those stale links from your past wandering and hope they still exist, not certain if there were other alternatives out there. You would be blind and dumb. Time would drag as nothing would be reported instantly. Your favorite movie star's movements and gossip topics would be buried in the debris of the net, never to be found.

Your world would get small. You would be dull and uninformed and exhausted by the effort to manually search for stuff you need, stuff you find instantly now with Google search. How is Mayim Bialik feeling a day after her car accident?

Curious about the top things people look for? The top things people would not know without Google search? Here they are, and it would be a dark, dreary world without the results to these topics, oh the horror, the horror! When is the anniversary of the death of Elvis anyway?

On August 16, 2012, the top 7 search topics were (from http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends ) :

1. Elvis Presley
2. Powerball
3. Melky Cabrera
4. Bumbo Recall
5. Mayim Bialik
6. Rich Kids of Instagram
7. Felix Hernandez

Now imagine a world where you couldn't find out five things about each of these seven super-interesting topics in the next three minutes. That would be the desert of information you would live in without Google search.