Google is a very powerful search engine and possibly the most useful tool on the internet.
People always come up with unintended uses for things–I’ve used Google in some not-just-searching ways. For instance, sometimes I’ll search for a few similar German phrases (in quotes) to see which is likeliest to be grammatical. z.B. I’ll search for “der steife”, “das steife”, then “die steife” if I’m not sure about the definite article.
How do you use Google?
Unlikely use for Google?
As a refreshing after-dinner mint.
I’ve done the same as the OP, sorta. I was trying to remember if it was “Vive le France” or “Vive la France” (I studied a lot of French, but it’s been about ten years), so I typed each, with quotes, into Google.
It’s “Vive la France,” which was what I had thought in the first place.
I use it to check my spelling, along with the more normal things.
For getting all sorts of physics related stuff and unit conversions. For example, I type in
Earth mass in slugs, and it tells you
1 Earth mass = 4.09362734 × 10^23 slugs
Or that 1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10^27 picometers
I sometimes use it for simple math.
It can be used for song lyric searches. Just type a short phrase from the song, in quotes, and usually it’ll tell you the title and artist right in the preview on the google search page. You never even have to leave google.
And of course, googlebombing, googlewhacking, and googlefighting. Somewhere I found a thing that finds random images from the Google Image Search, resulting in… well… randomness. I think it’s somewhere in www.milkandcookies.com probably…
Math? Physics?!
<homer simpson>
bor–ing! 
</homer simpson>
OK, guaranteed fun times, folks–
look for embarrassing pictures of people by entering
phrases in quotes into Google’s search box such as:
“this is a bad picture of me”
picture “after my perm”
pictures “picture of me” moustache
“picture of me” “big nose”
“picture of me in a speedo”
:eek:
I’ve heard of someone recovering his web site from Google cache after his web server crashed.
Google cache is also useful as a way to highlight keywords in a web page. Even when I think I know how to find the page without google, I sometimes use Google and view the cache so I can see the keywords highlighted.
It’s a good crossword puzzle tool. Especially for finding names.
I frequently use the image search on Google. While that may not be so unusual, the way I use it is that, if I need to trace the outline of a certain object (which I do in Photoshop, using its layers feature) then I will look for a photo of that object and use it as a guide for tracing the lines in my drawing. Because of this method I use for drawing, I probably also use Photoshop in ways it’s not usually used.
When editing, I like the little-known Glossary tool:
http://labs.google.com/glossary
It will find most common terms; it’s always interesting to see how different industries use the same acronyms, sometimes leading to confusion. Was that CD a certificate-of-deposit or a compact disc?
Are they referring to IP as TCP/IP or Intellectual Property?
I’ve also used it to check grammar and spelling in foreign languages.
I use it to check grammar in foreign languages, mostly French, but more in the sense of entering a phrase that I think should be common (like “je ne sais pas”) to make sure there are at least some French people saying it like that.
But I mainly popped in to recommend to Freedom the website:
http://dict.leo.org
for any German consultation you may need. That thing’s dictionary is massive, and everything has appropriate links to find all conjugations, declinsions, pronunciation, etc.
Wow! Thanks, Skwerl. Seems useful. (wie viel Deutsch sprichst du?)
Labs.Google.com has some pretty fun stuff. The Google Sets thing is fun, and I surprise myself sometimes by finding useful tasks for it.
Thanks for the Googlefight link. This’ll be hours of fun 
Haha…I typed Geddy Lee vs John Lydon. Mr. Rotten stomped poor Geddy’s ass.
Jon
I’m writing a book using google. It’s a collection of notable days in literary history, such as the day Bernard Shaw bought condoms, when Martin Amis got his teeth fixed and when Salinger first got his hands on Joyce Maynard.
As you can see, it’s a serious study.
Anyhow, I’ve been using google to gather all kinds of information, including birth and death dates of authors I haven’t found through the usual sources, like the Encyclopedia Britannica site.
Sometimes, I’ll google an author’s name just to see what’s out there. And researching things like the fight between Jonathan Franzen and Oprah will be found only online.
This project wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without google.
You mean Barney Google? Thank you fer askin’, it’s been a good while since WHACK
Sometimes, I use it to clear out the cobwebs and cat hair around the corners of the kitchen floor. I don’t know what they do with all that stuff. Maybe when somebody googles “cobwebs+cat hair” they get it all. Google sucks up everything and sprays it around. You have to wonder what that does to the ecosystem. Everything becomes homogenous eventually. “Buddhist art” means no more than “airfare to Ames, Iowa.” “Sequoia” is just as mundane as “Secaucus.”
Kinda makes you wanna wonder, don’t it?
I had forgotten about googlefighting. I just beat Cecil Adams by a ratio of 5:1. And it’s not like my name is that common either.
I use it to check for phrases and idioms in foreign languages - when I´m wondering “can you really say that?” or “which of these words go better together”. Also compound words you don´t find in your basic dictionary.
Freiheit, while I definitely don´t want to know why you were searching for that particular word (snigger), Skwerl´s suggestion is indeed very useful; leo also has a forum where you can ask if you don´t find a particular word or its usage in the dictionary.
I love the image search and often find weird websites by following the link on an image.