Turn with me to the book of Odd Jobs, Chapter 1.






Thus endeth the reading of our perhaps somewhat facetious and yet still meaning-rich scriptural parody.

Now then: Good morning, flock!


And with you!


Peace be with you!


Good morning!


Wait a minute, I think we got that backwards, folks. I think you guys are supposed to say 'good morning' to me first and THEN say 'and with you' -- you know: in response to the bit where I say 'Peace be with you!'



Oops. Looks like Secretary Betty may have typed that up backwards this week.

Secretary Betty Mashaponit, Ladies and Gentlemen, or 'Bulletin Betty' as we like to call her in the back offices. Just kidding, Betty: You're overworked and underpaid, my dear, so even relatively large gaffes on your part such as this one are fully understandable in your case, believe me.

Now then: let's get back to today's lesson:

We find, then, that Webmaster Job starts his Internet career with great hopes, with his site easily being accessed by diverse groups of people across the planet thanks to favorable listings in the search index of Almighty Google. He has what he calls a Super Shower Song Survey, counting down the top 10 songs that folks sing in the shower, and the page is actually featured in a real-life lifestyle magazine. He holds actual French language classes online and recruits actual real-live students for his courses, who even pay him (mercy on us!) He even gets a letter from a principal at a grade school on the Seychelles Islands, commending him (Job) for the fun, encouraging articles that he writes for kids, and urging him to "keep up the good work"!

But then one day, a spammer shows up at an I.T. conference (and not just A spammer, of course, but the archetypal Spammer of Spammers, Satan himself) and taunts Google, saying: You think that Job the Webmaster is happy with your search listings and that's why he doesn't complain about your status as a huge monopoly: Well, let me push his currently prominently listed pages back to page 30 or so of the Google search results, and then we'll see what Job REALLY thinks of Google!

Well, even an all-powerful Law of Nature such as Google gets pissed off if you taunt it like this (hey, it's only human nature, right?) so Google essentially tells the Spammer to 'put up or shut up.' In short, Google says, Fine: I give you permission to deep-six his site visibility on the Google search results page so that we can see how he responds to his sudden invisibility on the World Wide Web -- only don't do what? Folks? Anybody?

That's right, God (er, I mean Google) says: Whatever you do: Do not -- He repeats, do not -- crash his server!

So we pick up again at verse 17, where we read:



Amen.


And with you.




"And with you"? I wonder what Secretary Mashaponit was drinking yesterday afternoon when she typed up this church bulletin? "And with you," indeed! You guys were supposed to say 'Amen' at this point!

Oh, never mind.

Anyway, we all know the rest of the story: Job continues slaving away, creating articles, jpegs, gifs, etc. for his old-school web site, and meanwhile his site rankings just keep going down and down and down.

But what's the important thing, here? Anybody?



Yes, that's right, Sally: Job did not curse Google, did he? That's the important thing.

Yes, but you can bet that he was biting his tongue the whole time, huh? I mean, can you imagine: there you are, a reasonably successful webmaster back in the glory days of, say, 1999. You seem to actually be going somewhere in the online world, and then, almost overnight (say, 2004 or so) your site is buried under an avalanche of Social Web pages, many of them used by real-world friends to tell each other when they are next going to brush their flippin' teeth or eat a bowl of Corn Flakes. ("I am just now going to the carsey, dudes. What did you think about that O's game last night?") In short, the Social Web has taken over and you're like: What's up with that?

So you can see how hard it must have been for Job to keep his big trap shut. But Job managed to do it. Job continued to spout the party line: Google as world savior, that is, yadda-yadda-yadda -- and not a word about troublesome monopolies.

Let us pray.

I heard that, by the way: Somebody in the balcony just whispered 'And with you'!



Wise guy! Humph!



Right. A closing prayer and then we're out of here:

Dear Google,

Thank you for your tolerance of your unworthy webmasters -- for we know that all web sites are in your power and that, with just a whim, you could consign any one of our pages to oblivion if it shouldst please thou to throw down on us like that. Lead us to accept your ways like Job did, even if we sometimes have what (at least on the surface of it, anyway) seem to be valid misgivings about the double dealing that is (perhaps?) inherent in your simultaneously listing pages for free and yet forcing webmasters to advertise with you if they want to have 'real' listings, as who should say: "If you REALLY want to be seen, you're gonna have to pay up, Jack!"

Keep us blindly believing in the benignity of your monopoly power and lead us not unto Mountainview in many busses full of protesting webmasters who question the wisdom of allowing one private organization to single-handedly control visibility on the World Wide Web, which these days essentially means controlling visibility, "period," of course, "full stop."

Amen.


And with --


And don't even THINK about saying "And with you." Did our apparently slaphappy secretary really type that in there yet a THIRD time?

Bulletin Betty, please meet me after class, will you -- I mean, after church.

The rest of you, get lost -- beneath the avalanche of Google's inane social Web offerings, that is.

Man, walking toward back, hat in hand: Thank you, Father O'Really.


And with you, Sir: And with you!