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Does Google wish the iPad didn't exist?

A simple Google search for "disk space on iPad" doesn't offer you quite what you'd think. The Google search engine feigns incomprehension.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

How has Apple's launch of the iPad made other companies feel? Has it brought sneaking admiration or steaming ire?

I fear that Google might not be leaping for joy like leprechauns.

You see, one of the strange world figures I have arbitrarily come to follow on Twitter, 15-year-old Irish blogger, Tommy Collison, decided he would use Google unparalleled search engine to see how much disk space there was on the iPad.

Being a manboy of strong left brain, he entered "disk space on iPad". What he received was apparently innocent incomprehension. "Did you mean 'disk space on iPod?'," asked the Omnipotent Seeker.

Now I wondered whether Collison had merely lucked upon the Google search engine when it was in deep and abiding shock at the thought of a new product coming from Apple. Perhaps its algorithms were temporarily rendered insensate by the product's evident charm. Perhaps it had heard that Steve Jobs had not been complimentary about the company's "don't be evil" mantra.

So I left it a few days. Monday, I tried the "disk space on iPad" Google search for myself. As you can seen from the screen grab, Google is still convinced I am thinking of the iPod.

It might well be that Collison was the only person to ever wonder about disk space on the iPad. It might well be that everyone else in the world is merely wondering how much it will cost and how lovely it will feel.

But what if Google wants you to think the iPad really doesn't exist? What if the algorithm is programmed by strangely sensitive (or even censortive) people who believe that there will soon be a Droidy version of the iPad?

What if they want you to think that the iPad, if such a thing exists, will have no disk space at all?