I present to you two million-dollar-ideas which I will not pursue.
…So feel free:
1. aogoogle.com – “Afraid Of Google Dot Com”
As you may or may not know, google logs every single thing you have ever searched for, and keeps that in a database which is linked to you both by cookie ID and by IP. Especially now that they are required to share those records with the feds*, aogoogle.com would serve as a gateway to google and other services (to strip off potential monitoring devices). Yes, I know there are similar anonymizer services out there, but “aogoogle” is a a killer name, and it's not taken, plus it would get a lot of press and attention (and maybe a lawsuit or two).
2. (no site name yet) – Speculative News
Every day the site would post six to ten news stories. Half would be “speculative news” — that is, news stories that could be true but aren't. These stories would range from the silly to the serious. Anyway, people would guess which ones were real and which were, with the day's winners being put into a draw for a daily prize. The real key to the site though is the attached debate forums which I believe would be very vibrant.
Both of the above ideas could be kick-started on a budget of probably $2500 or less, with advertising revenues supporting the sites as they grow. Well, I thought they were decent ideas anyway…
And does anyone else think it's odd that the slogan for Microsoft's search engine is “More Useful Everyday”? Doesn't that imply that it was pretty much useless in the recent past? Although the wording is interesting — what does it mean when you say “more useful everyday” rather than “more useful every day”? I assume it is a conscious decision.
* Thanks to the Homeland Security act, the government needs NEITHER A WARRANT OR PROBABLE CAUSE to demand your search records from Google (Google can confirm that they comply with these requests, but legally they are not even allowed to tell us how many such requests have been made). There's a good chance that a copy of the entire database has been obtained by the IAD. So ask yourself — what would YOUR search records say about you? Oh, and if anyone's wondering, I'd light my servers on fire and throw them servers off a roof before I'd give the government access to my records.
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