elgooG
elgooG is a mirror image version of the Google
search engine. The search page and all
results are displayed in reverse. The site is called the "google mirror"
as a parody of the term mirror in computing, which usually refers to a
copy or backup of another website. The site was created by a group
called All Too Flat, who put up various comedy and satire pages on their
website.
On elgooG, all pages are displayed with the order of letters reversed,
though the letters themselves are displayed normally. The images on the
site are also reversed, and queries to the site must be entered
backwards. The results are also displayed backwards, although the pages
linked to are not run through any filters, and just display normally.
The site also utilises right-to-left text input fields and scrollbars
where available.
New Scientist Magazine reported in December 2002 that the site had
become popular in China, where the authorities had prevented locals from
accessing the normal Google web site, but had not filtered elgooG.
Apparently large numbers of multilingual Chinese web-surfers had
mastered operating their computers in mirror image, and could use this
site to get around the Chinese firewall. As the page doesn't support
Chinese coding, however, such users were restricted to pages in
languages that use the Latin alphabet.
External links
elgooG sites
Articles
- Slashdot (September 8, 2002 and September 12, 2002)
- Cnet wire (News.com, *IEEE Spectrum (October 2002)
- New Scientist (#1) (#2) (September 2, 2002 and December 2, 2002)