Google’s home page today shows a bar code to mark the invention of the bar code, so says the explanatory title on mouseover.

As you may know from having read the relevant post on my book blog, I have a bar code scanner device. It’s very simple to use; you just plug it in a USB port and scan things like they do in shops.

I had just got back from the shops, actually, where I had been scanning my shopping myself. I got some pick and mix tomatoes, but couldn’t find them on the screen. I scanned them in as cherry tomatoes because that’s what kind I got. I hope I didn’t diddle myself! Anyway, I had a message from Colin with the link to the Google home page, and saying to scan it. I didn’t know what he was on about at first, because I hadn’t seen the Google home page, but then I did and had and other past tense auxiliaries, so I got the scanner from the cat’s bedroom, where I’d been scanning all the ISBN codes for my Library Thing, and plugged it in and waited for it to install, like USB things do by magic, then I scanned the bar code, wondering whether it would work on the computer moniter, and it did!

It says “Google”, which wasn’t really a surprise. The cursor was in the Google search box, so it went off and searched for Google on Google, because it effectively presses the enter key after scanning.

I bet you were all dying for confirmation of what it said.

categories: Nature and Science and Tech
tags: Google
last modified: 10th Aug 2011