I’m Christian Arno, founder and Managing Director of translation/localization company Lingo24, and I’m delighted to report that Lingo24’s search engine rankings are back up again, after a little while of being, well, not quite so high.
Myself and a few others at Lingo24 started joking about how our relationship with Google was like a real life relationship, with ups and downs…and this kind of grew arms and legs, and what we came up with was a quirky/funny little love story to Google.
Given it’s coming up for Valentine’s Day, we thought this was quite topical. So here it is…an open letter to G, mon amour:
An open letter to G, mon amour
I can remember when we first met. I was lonely and hungry. You were plain; a stick of a thing compared to your current self. You didn’t say much. You didn’t need to. You’d captured the Zeitgeist.
It wasn’t love at first sight – I knew even then that competition for your affections would be fierce. But I think even you would admit that you saw something in me. We were on the same page. You went to great lengths to help me win you over, and it was, frankly, pretty easy to win your affections. You didn’t have many like me after you at that time, you weren’t the icon you are today, and I just needed to tell you I was popular for you to believe it.
Of course, a few carefully chosen words in the right places helped, but I needn’t have fretted so much. You were mine. And I…I was happy as Larry.
I thought it would last forever. You fed me. You watered me. You listened to me. It seemed, no matter what I did, you were always there for me, day and night, supporting and encouraging me. We did ever more together. We didn’t even have ups and downs – it seemed like nothing could disrupt our shared harmony and (I thought) symbiotic growth. Your foreign cousins welcomed me just as warmly – I was part of your world now.
Of course you’re never aware something is going wrong in a relationship until it’s too late. I had no idea you were living the dream with countless others all over the world. Silly me, I’d have said you were incapable of such duplicity, content as I was. I knew others were flirting with you – and who could blame them? – but I always thought I’d be your no. 1 (or at least in your top 10).
I didn’t even know you’d been organising all these Dances. Until, that is, one day, straight after a Dance, you unceremoniously dumped me. Dumped! After all we’d been through! You didn’t even email. Or respond to my numerous emails. Can you imagine what my life’s been like for the last two years? I’ve spent it hoping and praying that one day you might return; that one day, you’d realise that, yes, others have their plus points, but that what we had was, well, special. That we might be uniquely content, even. You used to rank me so highly.
I heard your tastes had changed. The variety of hats you’d once embraced were so last year. I threw out everything I had in grey. I was pure as could be. Still nothing. Not a peep. I even resorted to flashing my cash, vainly hoping I could buy my way back into your affections. What was wrong with you? You just weren’t listening. I might as well have buried my head in the sandbox. Of course I cast curious glances at others, but I was too entangled in your web. Besides, Bing and Jerry had lost their flavour: Bing was merciless and Jerry was a shade of his former self.
And now, with your long tail between your legs and buoyed by a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that is a psychoactive stimulant drug (excuse the duplicate content), you’re back. I’m feeling lucky.
