The Hindu Business Line : And you thought big companies don't have a sense of humour?

You have used Google. Simple, isn't it? There is a single box where you type in whatever you are looking for, and whoosh! in seconds, you are swamped with hundreds of thousands of results. Wish you could use something as quick and simple and effective looking for a soulmate? Never fear, Google, as usual, has anticipated this need, and launched Google Romance (http://www.google.co.uk/romance/).

The site has a simple tagline: "Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google" and goes on to say in its home page: "When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we've thought about it. A lot. Google Romance is our solution."

The entire process is a simple three-step process: upload your profile, search for love, and endure "thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date."

This is where Google Romance's business model kicks in: throughout your experience with the Romance service, you will be served ads that will make your date better: send some flowers, get some personal advice or even get a bridal-wear catalogue. You have seen contextual ads in Gmail, Romance leverages that into contextual dating.

There is a downside to this whole thing, though. If you don't want to see contextual dating ads, you cannot use the product, even for a fee.

Take the tour to understand how the concept works and how you can "live happily, and contextually, ever after."

And don't forget to read the FAQs for all the technical and other details before you actually try out the service. Once you have taken the tour, and read the FAQ, do take the time to try a search to find what you are looking for.

If you still haven't rushed off to try the service, let's admit it: wasn't it too good to be true? Well, yes, it was Google's 2006 Fool's Day joke.

But it's not the first time that Google is doing something like this.

Last year, we had Google's foray into health beverages, Google Gulp (http://www.google.com/googlegulp/). This amazing drink could "maximise your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty." Check out the history page as well as the product details page, but don't miss the FAQs. Also, each page has a "Google Gulp and Your Privacy" section in very small print, but take care you do read it.

And in 2004, we had the lunar jobs ad from Google (http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html). The ad admits that the "first non-trivial challenge is building a lunar base." The entire ad is spread over seven pages of hilarious job ad copy. The last page is too much for someone who manages to only smile through the first six: "Applicants must be at least 18 years of age by April 1, 2007 and have proof of earth residency. Google is an equal opportunity employer."

And before that, we had the PigeonRank page put up in 2002.

In a page titled "Our Search: Google Technology", there is a huge write-up about how Google uses superior Pigeon Cluster (PC) technology by training the domestic pigeon.

It goes on to explain, "The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant Web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings." Don't miss the FAQs on this one, too.

And in the year 2000, we got the Google MentalPlex (http://www.google.com/mentalplex/), which was the only search engine that could accurately return results without the user even typing in the query!

As usual, read the FAQ carefully, and check out the illustrations.

As if all this was not enough, just go to Google Moon (http://moon.google.com/), and slide the zoom level to maximum and you will find that the moon is made of cheese!

nagaraj@thehindu.co.in