Google Sandbox

Yesterday I made my way up to the Google Dance. It was my first time there, and as soon as I arrived, I saw it. The Google Sandbox.

Yes, the Google Sandbox really is a physical entity, not a creation of some SEO’s overactive nightmare!

My Palm Treo 600 was not working properly again, so I couldn’t snap a shot of it.

Fortunately, I realized I could just use Google and MSN’s online tools, and post links from their sites showing you pictures. The Microsoft one is more detailed, but they don’t have a complete shot of the buildings. Regardless, in both images you can clearly see a round tan circle near the middle of the image. That’s the Google Sandbox.

When I arrived I witnessed hundreds of people standing in it, wearing t-shirts with domain names printed on them. They weren’t doing anything, except passing out business cards, and passing bundles of string around. I watched for a while, and the amount of string just grew and grew and grew. Soon, I couldn’t see any of the people – it was just one big mass of string. What are they doing I thought???

I asked a Google employee, who looked sadly at the group and responded: “ah, well, you see those are all new sites that are building links. The problem is they’re doing it so wildly we can’t tell what any of them really stand for, or what they’re actually about.”

I realized that I had come to Google and seen Purgatory! Wow.

A few minutes later, the ball of string collapsed and almost all these people just died. (!) They literally collapsed and immediately vanished into thin air. The few that remained smiled proudly, walked out of the box, and joined the community. As quickly as they left, new people, wearing t-shirts with entirely different domain names on them appeared, and it all started over.

Funny thing imagination.

Google’s sandbox is actually a volleyball court. It was well used last night at the Google party.