British Farce Spoofed for Googlers

Lauren Weinstein has produced a song, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major Googler" which is cute. It doesn't capture the entire essence of Google, of course, but it's amusing nonetheless. If you don't already get the theme, it's Gilbert & Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from The Pirates of Penzance. (If you're not familiar with G&S or that musical, it's a farce - the character introducing himself, proud of his role in the British Navy.) He dedicated it to all Google employees. I went to read the lyrics first, but it's much more fun to listen to the mp3.

I still remember when Google was just Larry and Sergey and a few other friends at Stanford, so I'll admit that the thought of people working there who have never even seen either of them is odd to me, but I'm sure it's the case these days. I don't know if it's actually true that they ask prospective employees to build working disk drives from lego sets as the song notes (pun intended), but if so, that would be Larry's influence. He had a printer he'd built out of legos when we were undergrads at UofM. And he was talking about the book scanner then. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that project. I know Google's getting more criticism these days as it grows larger, but I still think they are doing well sticking to their core mission considering their size. Enjoy the song.