The Google *Metaverse

*Term metaverse taken from sci-fi novel Snow Crash

There is nothing more pleasant than to wake up after 6 hours of really disturbed sleep and find your address bar suddenly gone from your firefox browser. You think, maybe you did something wrong. You think,”You stupid lay user you! You probably hit one of those hidden buttons designed for some invisible way of removing the address bar. Well, enjoy your own work! Go ahead and try accessing your wordpress / Facebook /Orkut & other sites through Google! You are so stupid you probably deserve it!”

Well…now that you have f***ed it up this bad, you feel that you should at least *try* to find a solution. So, you go to the Google search bar (which is the only thing working in your navigation bar), and type in:

“My firefox address bar is not working! Help!”

…and get ready to trudge through all the 1000 forums where someone might have posted an answer. You actually found a forum called BUG#240242 in Mozilla Firefox. This is how the thread goes:

Summary: At random, the location bar ceases to load pages

Steps to reproduce:
1. Enter a URL in the location bar
2. Hit the Enter key or click the green arrow

Expected Result:
URL opens in tab

Actual Result:
Nothing. No new page will load from the URL bar in any tab.

In reply to it, someone had written:

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can’t fix it, because your description didn’t include enough information. You may find it helpful to read “How to report bugs effectively” http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We’d be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.

The next reply is the first user, typing pages of information according to the forum’s instructions and there are several such versions of the same problem typed again and again. Apparently, everybody has, in some or the other, ended up confused and with their address bars missing. And no replies with any solutions in it.

You get the message. You are pathetic. Just like every other goddamn lay user on this earth.

So you find that it’s a firefox bug and no one really knows how to fix it. You allow yourself to panic. A lot. Because you have a press release to finish and you will need an address bar for your research. And Because if the big shots of the open source community don’t know how to fix it, then there is nothing in the hell that you can do except dilate your pupils and make a face like you have just eaten a rotten egg…
you see, a browser without an address bar is very painful and annoying.

Humph! You don’t want to get back to the horror of using Internet Explorer again- those hundreds of pop ups, that snail mail speed and those mps crashes. So, you finally will have to turn to a new browser. Painful still, but doable. You have heard about google chrome. Maybe you should try it.

You go to Google and search for Google chrome and get to the place where it says “Download google chrome” and click on the button. It will take you to the terms and conditions page. For a second you wonder if it says,

“Listen! We are Google, and your relationship with us is very special, as in, we value our slaves. Please get your branding done as soon as possible ‘coz in the near future, when the revolution hits the world, and if you aren’t a Google-ite, then we won’t be able to save you….at any cost!”

But only for a second.

Of course you don’t read the T & S page since you know it’s absurd. No one. Absolutely no one *actually* reads the T&S pages except for those paranoid morons who have nothing else to do other than to sit and read 20 pages worth of legal jargon and call themselves Hackers. Also, no corporation (even if they are as genius as Google) can own the world and its people or make you a slave through a browser T&S contract.

You passingly remember that, in a Resource collection lecture, your sneaky looking Journalism professor was able spell out the names, social security numbers, addresses, habits, paranoias, names of toilet bowl cleaners and cars owned by you and all your neighbours by “Googling it”.

You agree to the terms and services page as casually as you have done to other T&S pages (most of which said that they are entitled to read each and every word that you write to your wife, children, that other woman next door, and your secret brotherhood emails to your highschool friends; that they have copyrighted your soul and your first borns.)

You check the “please help google by sending all the crash reports for better services” box. You wonder if it has a double meaning. But you check it anyways. You are a conscentious citizen.

The download begins. Blue bars flicker. It will only take 1 min 24 secs. A minute and 24 seconds later you have the latest version of Google Chrome.  You open it. A simple page loads up.

It says,” As you visit sites, thumbnails of your most visited sites will be shown as soon as Chrome loads up.”
You wonder if it will show that free porn site that you visit like a thousand times in a day.

Chrome is definitely faster than firefox, looks more lightweight and viola- it has an address bar! A sudden calm is settling somewhere in your mind. You are sensing happiness and satisfaction. It’s like someone has given you your regular dose of morphine. And now you can browse- teary & red eyed – for another 24 hours and maybe more, continuously. You wonder why such silly things bother you so much. You must be crazy. You smile, kick back and continue your daily grazing around.