If George Bush is still trying to find those weapons of mass destruction, the President probably shouldn't turn to Google for help. Typing a Google search for "weapons of mass destruction" and hitting "I'm feeling lucky" gets you a realistic looking error message saying the WMDs "cannot be displayed. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors' mandate."
And it wasn't a hacker who pulled this stunt, according to the Associated Press - it was a practical-joking British pharmacist, Anthony Cox, who told the AP he created the page in February to get some laughs from his friends.
"It was really just a private joke among a few individuals and then I sent it off to a newsgroup," he told the news wire. "It just spread like wildfire throughout February. ... And then it started to die down during the war. During that time it had accumulated links from other Web sites, which pushed it up the Google page ranking system. Then it just went through the stratosphere in terms of hits. It became even more funny that Google couldn't find any WMD."
Google wouldn't comment on specifics when reached by the AP, but a company spokesman told the wire sites like Cox's hit the top of the Google search lists because they scored highest under Google's automated system.
In Cox's case, it meant his joke page beat out 1.4 million mostly serious pages covering WMDs. It also meant a volume of e-mail, including actual weapons inspectors amused by his page, the AP said. And, except for a few e-mails accusing him of being anti-war, Cox told the wire he's had no major repercussions – not even from the U.S. government.
"I don't have the White House or Donald Rumsfeld breathing down my neck yet," he told the AP. "There hasn't been a SEAL extraction team to get me yet."
