What If the NFL's Replacement Referees Ran Google? A Local Developer Tries to Find Out | Off Message

Seven Days needs your support!

Give Now

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

What If the NFL's Replacement Referees Ran Google? A Local Developer Tries to Find Out

Posted By on Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 4:45 PM

Football fans have spent September crowing about "replacement refs" — temporary referees the NFL is employing while it's embroiled in a contract dispute with the union that represents the league's usual officials. After just three weeks, the scabs have already gained a reputation of laughable incompetence, coming to a head last weekend when they potentially screwed the New England Patriots out of a victory and definitely screwed the Green Bay Packers.

What would happen if utterly unprepared "replacements" took over other stuff? Well, our Google searches wouldn't be very useful, as Replacement Google shows us. Type whatever you want to search for into Replacement Google — for example, "Vermont" — and watch as it returns a stream of results that's completely useless (for example, "A DVD of Cool Runnings.")

This fun diversion is the brainchild of Winooski developer and sports fan Erik Johnson. Johnson's also the man behind Just Enjoy!, an online travel site that organizes trips to big sporting events (we wrote about it in its previous incarnation as Vermont Baseball Tours in the sidebar here). The site went viral within hours — it's been spotlighted by BuzzFeedthe Huffington Postthe Los Angeles Times and Deadspin, just to name a few, and Johnson says it attracted 104,329 unique visitors just yesterday. Not bad for an hour's worth of work. 

And now that we've seen the dark side of a world with broken search, let us hope that Google doesn't lock out its algorithms.

Photo © Cory Thoman | Dreamstime.com

Comments

Showing 1-1 of 1

 

Comments are closed.

Since 2014, Seven Days has allowed readers to comment on all stories posted on our website. While we’ve appreciated the suggestions and insights, the time has come to shut them down — at least temporarily.

While we champion free speech, facts are a matter of life and death during the coronavirus pandemic, and right now Seven Days is prioritizing the production of responsible journalism over moderating online debates between readers.

To criticize, correct or praise our reporting, please send us a letter to the editor. Or send us a tip. We’ll check it out and report the results.

Online comments may return when we have better tech tools for managing them. Thanks for reading.

One or more images has been removed from this article. For further information, contact [email protected].

About The Author

Tyler Machado

Tyler Machado

Bio:
Tyler Machado was the digital media manager at Seven Days. He mostly worked behind the scenes making sure the website, email newsletters and social media feeds stayed in tip-top shape.

More By This Author

Latest in Off Message

Keep up with us Seven Days a week!

Sign up for our fun and informative
newsletters:

All content © 2023 Da Capo Publishing, Inc. 255 So. Champlain St. Ste. 5, Burlington, VT 05401

Advertising Policy  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us  |  About Us  |  Help
Website powered by Foundation