"The Search Engine That Gives Metaverse Faceware To Deplatformed Conspiracy Theorists offers great privacy, and will not share your personal information with ANYONE outside the boundaries of our beautiful, pancake-flat Planet Earth."
So, you saw the title, and you liked the look of the title. But if you were expecting a smorgasbord of brilliant new technical ideas, well… I am spectactularly sorry, but we now live in a reality where search engine concepts are ethical - not technical. You may indeed have noticed an almost obligatory trend among newer search engines, in which the product is summarised with a wonderfully ethical one-liner…
"The search engine that respects your privacy."
"The search engine that doesn't track you."
"The search engine that plants trees."
"The search that saves oceans."
I may be jumping to conclusions here, but do you think there might be a faint pattern emerging?…
Okay, so a cynic may say this is all just one big deflection from the fact that no one's actually come up with a new search tech concept since 1996. Well, apart from rigging and censoring the results, obviously. But look, ethical shit matters, and that feelgood one-liner is marketing dynamite.
Indeed, said marketing dynamite is set to become even more explosive as we tread tentatively towards the middle of this exciting decade. What we're likely to see in the near future, is a realm of far more imaginative innovation around the now well-established jumping-off point: "The Search Engine That…"
Such as…
THE SEARCH ENGINE THAT HELPS HORSES
I mean, who wouldn't wanna help horses? Let's go straight over to brand HQ for a full explanation of the concept…
"The Search Engine That Helps Horses puts YOU at the centre of an ingenious new system of equine welfare. Like all of history's greatest ideas, this is very simple. You use our search engine to needlessly and recklessly blow money on Amazon, we get a massive wad of affiliate commission, and then we gamble a variable and totally opaque percentage of that commission on horse races.
This will introduce a new level of buoyancy into the gambling industry, which will sponsor more horse races, giving racehorses longer careers and a better sex life.
All of this happens in total privacy (the search, that is - not the horse sex. Although audiences for the horse sex are not expected to be large). We only share your personal information with Amazon, who will only share it with Facebook, all your friends, all your family, all your neighbours, all the shops on your local high street, a shitload of underground corporate thugs with terms and conditions marginally less friendly than those of the Mafia, and the police. It doesn't get any more private than that."
THE SEARCH ENGINE WHOSE BOSS IS A NICE GUY
I'm as amazed as you are that we haven't seen this one already. But it's definitely coming. I'll let the man himself introduce the theme…
"Hi. I'm Chris Good, CEO of The Search Engine Whose Boss is a Nice Guy. I obviously didn't come up with the brand tagline myself. I'm too much of a nice guy to present myself as a nice guy. But when my great staff told me I was such a fantastic boss that I should call our search engine The Search Engine Whose Boss is a Nice Guy, I was too much of a nice guy to refuse.
My goal with this search engine is to ensure that my staff are treated nicely, as they would expect a nice guy to treat them. I believe all bosses should be nice guys. That's not sexist, by the way. There is room for women in business, but not their mood swings.
A mood swing, we should note, is not to be confused with a "boss fit" - which is an occasional, desk-banging, wall-kicking (and perhaps even chair-throwing) tantrum that a nice guy in the role of CEO is entitled to have when the stationery budget is exceeded by £3.50. Obviously there is a world of difference between a woman being slightly uncommunicative FOR NO REASON, and a nice guy like me throwing office chairs out of the window because SOMEONE BOUGHT TWO MARKER PENS WE DIDN'T NEED! When there is good REASON, a boss fit is justified and understandable.
So how does this great new search engine work? It's very simple. Naturally, every time I throw a staff member's chair out of the window during a boss fit, that member of staff has to stand up until their new chair is delivered. Every time I kick a hole in the office wall, a staff member has to suffer a draught until the hole is repaired. Every time I headbutt the drinks machine, it ceases to work and the staff go thirsty. Like all nice guys, I am deeply concerned about these issues and I want to help.
And now, you can help me to help my staff. Each time you engage with an ad on The Search Engine Whose Boss is a Nice Guy, I donate an unspecified and wholly secretive percentage of the commission to a nationwide startup project, which repairs the damage caused by raging tantrums from nice guys like me - on an emergency basis. By purchasing overpriced household goods through Microsoft, you will have a real impact on the welfare of my staff, and make the world a much better place.
And the icing on the cake? The whole search process from imagination to purchase is fully compliant with the very strictest of privacy expectations.*
* In the territories in which our cheap cloud storage is located - which may have no data protection laws or regulations whatsoever and be governed by a psychopath."
THE SEARCH ENGINE THAT DEFUNDS THE POLICE
Every time you engage with an ad, The Search Engine That Defunds The Police refuses to give any of the ad revenue to the police. Yeah, I er… I know a search engine wouldn't give any of its ad revenue to the police anyway. But by actually stating the fact in plain language, The Search Engine That Defunds The Police affords an important ideological victory to people who… Well, who want to defund the police, obviously. And it gets better. Let's allow the project innovators themselves to explain…
"Supported by leading luminaries within the digital rights movement, our brilliant scheme of NOT giving monies to law enforcement agencies is actually carried out on a completely local, regionally-focused basis. If you live in London, we don't give any money to the Metropolitan Police. If you live in Wolverhampton, we don't give any money to the West Midlands Police. Yes, it's true! In using The Search Engine That Defunds The Police, you are actually helping to deprive your very nearest police force of search engine ad revenue. And since we intend never to pay any tax, you will also be helping to not give money to the national policing infrastructure and the government!
But wait, there's more. Not only are you directly helping to not give any money to the police - you are also, in fact, helping to not give any money to the police IN COMPLETE PRIVACY! That's right, The Search Engine That Defunds The Police simply can't be bothered tell your local police that you played a key role in not giving them any money, so they will never know.*
* We reserve the right to sell the business to someone who CAN be bothered to tell the police that you played a key role in not giving them any money, but in such an event we would expect the police to immediately delete the information, since keeping it would basically be a waste of police computing resources.
You may be wondering what happens to the ad revenue we don't give to your local police, and to the tax we don't bother paying... Of course you are. Welp, don't worry, because we have come up with a masterstroke solution that will leave you open-mouthed at our sheer genius. We take all the money that was never paid to the police, and we first put it into our offshore bank account. Second (and this is the really clever bit), we leave it there."
THE SEARCH ENGINE THAT GIVES METAVERSE FACEWARE TO DEPLATFORMED CONSPIRACY THEORISTS
"What, exactly, is Metaverse faceware?", you ask. There's no precise definition or standard as yet. Indeed, the instigators of the Metaverse still don't really know what the Metaverse is, so it could take a while for gen like this to hit the ground. But be assured, once the meaning of the phrase "Metaverse faceware" is fully understood, and approved by Mark Zuckerberg's publicity adviser (obviously), your favourite deplatformed conspiracy theorist will be getting some. And all you have to do in order to make this wonderful thing happen, is look at adverts on a search engine. Handing you over to the team…
"You know how some search engines give to the natural environment? Well we at The Search Engine That Gives Metaverse Faceware To Deplatformed Conspiracy Theorists believe this neglects the welfare of the digital environment.
Conspiracy theorists are being wiped off social media almost as fast as trees are being wiped off the planet, and this has deep, negative consequences for society. Statistics show that when conspiracy theorists are left without the means to publish dumb videos and spread demented memes, they can end up breeding and writing books.
This causes a long-term increase in conspiracy theorists, coupled with a steady build-up of unsaleable paperbacks which will speed up deforestation and overwhelm bookshops with unsold stock. This will result in book-bonfires of such scale and ferocity that the natural planet may overheat and go a funny shape which is neither round nor flat but is certainly not a reliable surface for driving a car.
To combat this disaster waiting to happen, we at The Search Engine That Gives Metaverse Faceware To Deplatformed Conspiracy Theorists will dedicate a percentage of our ad revenue to the purchase of Metaverse faceware. We will then donate said faceware to deplatformed conspiracy theorists, so that they may safely continue to scream into a digital void while pieces of simple software pretend to be their friends.
Best of all, The Search Engine That Gives Metaverse Faceware To Deplatformed Conspiracy Theorists offers great privacy, and will not share your personal information with ANYONE outside the boundaries of our beautiful, pancake-flat Planet Earth. What's not to like?"
And there you have it. The search engines of the very near future. Doesn't it just make you feel glad to be living in the 2020s?