Start typing a term into google these days and it will drop down a list of auto-completed suggestions. For example, if I enter "foonyor" it thinks I just can't spell very well and makes suggestions like "funny games" and "funny jokes" etc. The key is that google considers what you've typed so far and then cross references it with what other people out there in the ether have ended up typing after beginning in the same way.
If you type in somebody's name, you'll often get a suggested keyword that reflects what other people have been trying to find about them. For instance, the top suggestion for completing "Gordon Brown" is "youtube" because of his recent bumbling attempt to engage the youth of Britain via the intertubes.
Where things become a bit creepy is when you're searching for someone less famous and you get to see what other people are trying to learn about them. Today's weird example involves my former colleague (and all-around genius) Pardis Sabeti, currently an Assistant Professor at Harvard. Here's the ten suggested completions after typing in her name:
- married
- harvard
- lab
- thousand days [ed: this is the name of her band]
- biography
- boyfriend
- wiki
- band
- cnn
