What you might (not) know about Troogle
Maybe you have noticed around these days about some hype we have created about Troogle and The New Web Project. Yes, people, it was a hoax. We would like to grab this opportunity to explain this. We started off this project as an assigment for school. We are four students from University of Amsterdam (Interactive Media). We needed to create ‘buzz’ and generate media attention to a fictional (online) story. And that succeeded.

The concept started off as an conspiracy weblog called “Troogle”, with a critic look on what Google’s doing. Behind this weblog are 4 fictional characters, Whuup aka John Nijenroode, Astromaniac aka William van Urken, Henry de Waag and Igor Tinbergen. All of them are ex-employees at Google. They discovered the plans of Google, Microsoft, EOL, Mozilla, W3C, that they are working on a new form of the internet, called “The New Web Project“. They discovered during a meeting of some Google top members (in the Bilderberg Hotel in Amsterdam) some crucial information, that also proves that the Dutch government might be involved as well. Google has totally other plans with this project than everyone else thinks. Not a new form of the internet, but a way to collect personal information of individuals by breaking into the databases of the government, so that Google can improve it’s user-centred products (by knowing more of their users…). So when they discovered this information, they turned this time really against Google and post a new blog post at Troogle about all this, including photos and evidence.

Off course, none of this is actually based on the truth.

The meeting conference at the Bildenberg Hotel in Amsterdam was also fake. We planned the steps to create a believable story. We had also plans to upload a video, which actually WAS made during the ‘meeting’, but after the hype never released. Well, we have uploaded it to YouTube, so you can see it anyhow. Those ‘Google-employees’ in the suits on the video? Two of the members of our team. We have also used Twitter as a social media communication tool. All the four ‘ex-employees’ of Google used Twitter. We faked the weblog Troogle as it was created somewhere at the beginning of 2009, but the posts are actually created all in June (by simply changing the publish date). This way, the blog looks more real. What we never could have thought of, was that the hoax would spread SO fast throughout the web. As soon the breaking news post was published at Troogle, everybody in the whole wide world was picking up our news! See for yourself.

Some believed it was a viral, some a hoax. But it was clear, we have managed to create a buzz. And THAT was the assignment! We didn’t imagine things would turn out like this, generating so much publicity, which started four hours after the blogpost at Troogle at the popular Dutch weblog Geenstijl. After that, loads of blogs, websites, Tweets and forums were talking about The New Web Project and Troogle. It even reached China! After the message on The New Web Project changed from ‘soon’ to ‘tonight’ (we did just for fun, hehe!) people discovered it en discussed about it. When the website was taken off line, people even talked about that! There was someone who made even a video about Troogle and our dear friend Cocaman discovered more than anyone else about the project. Also, the national newspaper The Parool published the real story last friday on it’s website, after they had contacted us personally. And even IAMCore (Dutch), the students association of our university, got caught too. Must be really weird to see something happen in the news with a website that is registered to your own school! We were in the picture, that’s for sure.

Our goal was to create a believable story about the conspiracy side of Google. Our mistake was to register John Nijenroode as owner at Troogle and The New Web Project. We did that, because early in the progress of this concept, we didn’t think of everything and just needed a fake name to register the URL www.thenewwebproject.com. It was necessary to give the concept a change. And in a way, it made sure we got so much attention.

The following email was sent by the Google legislation Service Team (in Dutch, including a typo). It sounded a little bit offensive and some what blackmailing likeness. We don’t think four students can beat up the power of the ‘almighty Google’ and we absolutely never intend to. They did no further research about Troogle or The New Web Project either. So we were forced to shut down TNWP within 24 hours, otherwise Google will take legal steps. We wonder how such a powerful company has the right to do this? But, we also understand Google, using their logo is a mistake of us. And think about the fact that this email can be fake too. That because of the fact we couldn’t find any similar emails on the internet. Are we fooled as well? But again, we are searching with Google. Who tells us Google isn’t hiding those results from the list?

Dear sir/madam John Nijenroode,

We noticed that you are trying to undermine/harm the good name of Google and/or it’s direct partners. In case you do not shut down your registered domain within 24 hours after sending this mail, we will take legal steps.

We hope we informed concerning this matter, if you have further questions please do not hesitate to contact us, we will try to reply. The 24 hour time limit remains intact, as mentioned above.

Best Regards,

Google legislation Services Team

After this project it is time to learn from it. We think that Google has a certain monopoly in this world. Like sharks, if they smell any bad things, they are ready to take you down before you even know it. But, Google is also very handy and we think not very much people could miss it, despite of the privacy issues that some people argue about. Yes, we use Google services too. And we like it. We have also observed that there are certain people are fooled by us, convinced about the so calling “truth” that we have made up. Really….you never know on internet. Think twice, you can be fooled again, maybe in a more negative way. People may believe or not… but it will happen again.

Well, we have learned a lot. It was fun! Yes, we did make some mistakes but you cannot deny that we have more than 20.000 visitors in 48 hours on Troogle. When its outcome was different, we even would publish TNWP fully; the website was almost done. Well, if you have any questions, please let us know using the comment option on this weblog. You can also send us an email via whuup@live.nl, all four of us will read this. We hope you all enjoyed the hype, and for Oprah: you can contact us at any time for the show… =)

Greets from Holland!

Joen (Astromaniac / William van Urken), Dirk (Igor Tinbergen), Erwin (Whuup / John Nijenroode) and Justin (Henry de Waag)
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
The Netherlands

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Wat je misschien (niet) wist over Troogle
Misschien heb je het de afgelopen dagen gemerkt: de hype die we gecreëerd hebben over Troogle en The New Web Project. Ja, mensen, het was nep. We willen graag deze kans aangrijpen om het een en ander uit te leggen. We zijn dit project begonnen als een opdracht voor school. Wij zijn vier studenten van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam, op de opleiding Interactieve Media. De bedoeling was ‘buzz’ te creëren en media-attentie te genereren. En dat is gelukt.

Het idee was een conspiracy weblog op te richten met de naam Troogle, waarop met een kritische blik werd gekeken naar wat Google allemaal uitvoert. Achter het weblog zitten onze vier verzonnen karakters: Whuup oftewel John Nijenroode, Astromaniac oftewel William van Urken, Henry de Waag en Igor Tinbergen. Allemaal zijn ze (zogenaamd) ex-medewerkers van Google. Ze komen achter de plannen van Google, Microsoft, EOL, Mozilla, W3C om een nieuwe vorm van het internet te ontwikkelen, genaamd “The New Web Project“. Ze ontdekking gedurende een meeting van de Google top belenagrijke geheime informatie, dat ook bewijst dat de Nederlandse overheid betrokken is. Google heeft totaal andere plannen met het project dan iedereen denkt. Niet een nieuwe vorm van het internet, maar een manier om informatie te vergaren van individuele personen uit de databases van de overheid, zodat Google nog meer weet van zijn gebruikers en de producten kan ‘verbeteren’. Een slechte zaak, vinden onze bloggers. Wanneer ze deze informatie ontdekken, richten ze zich deze keer helemaal tegen Google en maken een nieuwe blog post aan op Troogle, waarin ze alles uit de doeken doen over deze ontdekking, inclusief foto’s en bewijzen.

Natuurlijk is niets van dit alles gebaseerd op de waarheid.

De conferentie in het Bilderberg Hotel in Amsterdam was ook nep. We hebben dit uitgevoerd om een geloofwaardig verhaal te ontwikkelen. We hadden plannen om de video te uploaden, die we ook daadwerkelijk tijdens de ‘meeting’ bij Bilderberg hadden gemaakt, maar na de hype die ontstond hebben we die nooit uitgebracht. We hebben de video wel geupload op het personage account Whuup op YouTube, dus je kunt hem toch zien. En wie zijn die ‘Google-medewerkers’ op de video? Twee van onze teamleden in pak. We hebben daarnaast ook Twitter in gezet als social media communicatie. Elk van de ‘ex-medewerkers’ die Troogle bijhielden hadden ook een Twitter account. We hebben het weblog Troogle daarnaast doen lijken alsof het al maanden bestond, door in het verleden te posten. Alle blogposts zijn echter in juni 2009 gemaakt (door simpel de datum van publicatie te veranderen). Op deze manier leek het weblog realistischer. Wat we echter nooit hadden bedenken is dat deze hoax ZO snel over het web verspreidde. Zodra het ‘nieuws’ op Troogle stond, was iedereen in de wereld het bericht aan het overnemen! Kijk hier maar.

Sommigen dachten dat het een viral was, anderen een hoax. Maar het is duidelijk, we hebben het voor elkaar gekregen een buzz te creëren. En DAT was de opdracht! We hadden nooit gedacht dat de dingen zo zouden lopen, dat we zoveel publiciteit kregen, wat al vier uur nadat we het op Troogle hadden gezet begon met het weblog Geenstijl. Nadat dat gebeurde, begonnen talloze weblogs, websites, Tweets en fora over The New Web Project en Troogle te praten. Zelfs in China! Nadat het bericht op The New Web Project veranderde van ‘soon’ naar ‘tonight’ (wat we voor de lol deden, haha!) werd het door mensen ontdekt en werd erover gepraat. Toen de website offline werd gehaald, praatten mensen daar weer over! Er was zelfs iemand die de moeite nam een video over Troogle te maken. En onze grote vriend Cocaman ontdekte meer dan wie dan ook over het project. Ook Het Parool publiceerde het echte verhaal afgelopen vrijdag, nadat ze ons persoonlijk hadden gemaild. En IAMCore, de studentenvereniging van onze opleiding, trapten er zelfs in. Het moet raar geweest zijn om iets in het nieuws te zien gebeuren over een website die geregistreerd is onder het adres van je eigen school! We hadden aandacht, dat was zeker.

Ons doel was een geloofwaardig verhaal te ontwikkelen over de conspiracy ideeën over Google. Onze fout was de website van The New Web Project te registreren onder de naam van John Nijenroode (een van de Troogle bloggers). We hebben dat gedaan omdat we vroeg in het concepting proces niet genoeg nagedacht hadden over wat die website zou gaan inhouden. Het was nodig om het concept geloofwaardig te houden. Op een bepaalde manier heeft die site ervoor gezorgd dat we zoveel aandacht kregen.

De e-mail hieronder werd verzonden door Google legislation Service Team (in het Nederlands, inclusief typfout). Het mailtje klonk een beetje offensief en het leek op chantage. We denken niet dat vier studenten de ‘almachtige’ Google kan verslaan en waren dat ook absoluut niet van plan. Google heeft verder geen research gedaan naar Troogle of The New Web Project. We werden gedwongen TNWP te sluiten binnen 24 uur, anders zouden er gerechtelijke stappen volgen. We vragen ons af of Google het recht heeft om dit te doen. Maar we snappen ook de kant van Google wel. Hun logo gebruiken is natuurlijk niet toegestaan. Denk er daarnaast eens over na dat dit e-mailtje nog nep kan zijn ook. We kregen dat idee omdat we geen vergelijkbare mailtjes konden vinden op het internet. Zijn we er ingetrapt? Maar hoe dan ook, we zoeken die mailtjes natuurlijk met Google. Wie zegt ons dat Google die resultaten niet verbergt?

Geachte heer/mevrouw John Nijenroode,

Wij hebben gemerkt dat u mogelijk probeert de goede naam van Google® en/of haar directe partners schade te berokkenen. Indien u niet binnen 24 uur na het versturen van deze e-mail, de door u aangemelde domein off-line haalt dan zal Google ® gerechtelijke stappen tegen u ondernemen.

Wij hopen u hiermee voldoende geïnformeerd te hebben, mocht u echter vragen hebben dan kunt u op deze e-mail reageren waarna wij weldra uw e-mail beantwoorden. Echter blijf de termijn van 24 uur, zoals boven vermeld onverandert van kracht.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Google legislation Services Team

Na dit project is het tijd om ervan te leren. Welke conclusies kunnen we trekken? Wij denken dat Google een zekere monopoliepositie in de wereld heeft. Google is een haai; zodra ze iets negatiefs ruiken zijn ze er klaar voor om je onderuit te halen. Maar, Google is in het algemeen erg handig en we denken dat weinig mensen zonder al hun diensten zou kunnen. En ja, wij gebruiken de diensten van Google ook. En we vinden het leuk. We hebben naast dit alles ook ontdekt dat een aantal mensen in de hoax zijn getrapt. Je weet het dus nooit op het internet. Denk twee keer na de volgende keer, want zoiets kan nog een keer gebeuren en dan misschien in een veel negatievere zin. Mensen kunnen er in geloven of niet… maar het zal weer gebeuren.

Hoe dan ook, we hebben veel geleerd. Het was leuk! Ja, we hebben wat fouten gemaakt maar je kunt niet ontkennen dat we meer dan 20.000 bezoekers in 48 uur op Troogle hebben gehad. Als het anders was gelopen, dan hadden we TNWP daadwerkelijk online gezet; de website hadden we al deels af. Als je vragen hebt, laat het ons gerust weten via de reactie-optie op dit weblog. Je kunt ons ook een mailtje sturen via whuup@live.nl, wij lezen die mailbox alle vier. We hopen dat iedereen de hype leuk vond, en voor Oprah: you can contact us at any time for the show… =)

Bedankt!

Joen (Astromaniac / William van Urken), Dirk (Igor Tinbergen), Erwin (Whuup / John Nijenroode) and Justin (Henry de Waag)
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Interactieve Media

WHAT WE DISCOVERED TODAY IS HUGE. Glad we made it back.. it was pretty exciting. We went to the Bilderberg Hotel in Amsterdam this morning as some Google employees should have a meeting today. We wanted to interview some of them and confront them with some critics heard over the internet about Google and the public’s privacy concerns. We decised to secretly film some of the members entering the building, which you’ll see later this week.. we try to get the video online as soon as possible.

Pictures: Google CEO Eric Schmidt arrives in his car in front of the Bilderberg Hotel Amsterdam.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt arrived first, obviously holding some very important papers, you can see them on the photos in this blog post. After that, several other members of the Google staff – we don’t know their names yet – arrived at Bilderberg’s.. WHAT THEN HAPPENED WAS REALLY REMARKABLE! One of them dropped his papers.. HE DROPPED IT, just in front of us, several meters from our standing point. They quickly got the papers together and went inside, but guess what……

THEY LEFT SOMETHING.. a piece of paper with some notes about what they are planning to discuss.. which made us VERY UPSET. The piece of paper made true what we already thought about the so-called ‘company who wants to make ALL information free available for everyone’. One of the Google credos is ‘Focus on the user and all else will follow’, well now they WILL do that, and are going too far also.

Pictures: Eric Schmidt walks anxiously to the entrance of Bilderberg.

Google plans a ‘New Web’

Google has plans to work together with Microsoft and the World Wide Web Consortium (which we discovered yesterday). But also Mozilla and AOL are involved. And.. because of the secrecy of all this (and the cars parked at Bilderberg’s) we believe the GOVERNMENT is involved too.

What are they trying to do? Well, the document tells us there must be some kind of a ‘New Internet’, where those 5 companies are working together to re-arrange the way the Internet works. We don’t know every detail yet, sorry. But this one is big, very big.

What we then discovered is a temporarily website about this project, it is called The New Web Project. What we can see now is just an announcement of ‘The New Web Project‘ that will be launced ‘soon’. When that actually happens.. we don’t know. But have you EVER seen the Google and Microsoft logos together on an official released website? We don’t. And we don’t think it’s a good idea to let two of the biggest computer networking companies working together, let alone 5 of them.. what will become of the smaller ones? Eaten by the big fish? Is this another prove of the monopolistic ideas Google has? And WHY are they meeting in Amsterdam? Is the Dutch government involved too? Or is it just a ‘random’ country like the meeting (probably about the same topic!) this week in Belgium?

We have discovered a lot more, but don’t want to tell everything, YET. Just wait for our video to be put online this week, we’ll discover what Google is trying to do fully. For now we just want you to check www.thenewwebproject.com every day to see what is going on around here. Please also follow us at this blog and Twitter for the latest updates!

We have some evidence that there is something going on. Something where not only Google, but also Microsoft, the World Wide Web Consortium and several other computer industry companies are involved.. WHY are they doing this in the Netherlands??

Let me say this: we WILL be there. I suggest you do too. We’ll let you know what we find out what they are actually doing there.

One notable attendee at last year’s Bilderberg Group meeting amidst the gaggle of old industrialists, bankers and aspiring globalist politicians was Google CEO Eric Schmidt, one of the progenitors of the company’s slogan “Don’t Be Evil”.

Apparently, Schmidt doesn’t consider it evil to take his orders from the most undemocratic, crony and secretive organization on the planet.

Whether Schmidt makes his way to the 2009 elitist gathering at the Nafsika Astir Palace in Vouliagmeni Greece remains to be seen, but a Google representative is likely to take his place if Schmidt can’t make it.

Schmidt’s attendance is all the more revealing in light of recent censorship efforts against Alex Jones led by You Tube, which is owned by Google.

(As noted by a Haaretz report today, Schmidt took his place at last year’s Washington DC confab alongside people like Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice and World Bank President Robert Zoellick.

In one of the more balanced reports concerning the meeting so far, the Haaretz article states, “Mainstream press coverage of the Bilderberg meeting has grown, largely due to the internet. This year’s conference may have been covered by British broadsheets, but don’t expect to see any coverage from U.S. news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post – they will most likely be at the conference.”

No corporate U.S. news outlet has dared report on Bilderberg 2009 thus far. After all, over a hundred global powerbrokers, including the titans of government, industry, banking and the media, meeting in secret behind closed doors to plan the fate of the world really has no importance whatsoever in comparison with finding out “who got axed from American Idol,” – does it?

Painful things are point of discussion, for example the role of manager Eric Schmidt in the administration of Apple, supposed appointments about personnel management and a proposed agreement with book publishers concerning Google Books. The problems are all about the monopolistic side of the search engine. But.. Google says it does not form a threat to the world. Instead of a dominant search engine is Google an usual part of a large internet ecosystem, it claims.

Although the name ‘Google’ became a verb to descrive searching on the internet, Google claims it has competition of businesses as Amazon and Ebay. At the internet advertisement market, the business has the grand piece of that cake. 30% is for Google, and that’s far to much.

On Tuesday, Google quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables designed to sidestep the limitations of conventional relational databases.

Specifically, Fusion Tables has been built to simplify a number of operations that are notoriously difficult in relational databases, including the integration of data from multiple, heterogenous sources and the ability to collaborate on large data sets, according to Google.

“Without an easy way to offer all the collaborators access to the same server, data sets get copied, emailed and ftp’d — resulting in multiple versions that get out of sync very quickly,” reads the Google announcement, which has been largely overlooked, probably because it was made on the same day the company held a high-profile press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which will make conventional databases go the way of the rotary phone, according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst who is president of Arnold Information Technology.

Data spaces as a concept has been around since the early 1990s, and Google, realizing its potential, has been developing it since it acquired Transformic, a pioneer of the technology, in 2005, Arnold said.

Data-spaces technology seeks to solve the problem of the multiple data types and data formats that reside in organizations, which have to scrub the data and make it uniform, often at great cost and effort, in order to store and analyze it in conventional databases.

Data spaces envisions a system that creates an index that provides access to data in its disparate formats and types, solving what Arnold calls the “Tower of Babel” problem.

In the case of Fusion Tables, the technology should allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates, he said.
“So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,” said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August.

“If you’re IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible. Google is going to automatically construct data spaces and implement new types of queries,” he said. “Those guys are going to be blindsided.”

Fusion Tables is an early version of the product, as evidenced by its “Labs” label, which means Google considers it an experimental product. “As usual with first releases, we realize there is much missing, and we look forward to hearing your feedback,” Google’s blog post reads.

Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Bartz, however, declined to rule out a search partnership with Microsoft, which tried to buy Yahoo last year and remains open to some sort of deal that could bolster its search capabilities to compete with market leader Google.

“If you talk about search in general, you could partner with somebody,” she said in an interview with Fox Business News’ Liz Claman.

Bartz’s statement appeared to be her latest attempt to calibrate her position on Microsoft. She told an investor conference last week that Yahoo’s future would be “cleaner” if it didn’t strike any sort of deal with Microsoft, a comment that sent Yahoo shares tumbling 5%.

Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have talked about forming a partnership on search but the exact nature of those discussions has not been clear.

Bartz also appeared to rule out any sort of partnership with AOL, which Time Warner recently decided to spin off.

“Yahoo-AOL would not happen anytime in the forever future,” she said. “Yahoo is a much stronger property in a different direction and there’s no sense confusing all of that.”

Bartz once again downplayed Microsoft’s newly revamped search engine, dubbed Bing, which for a day surpassed Yahoo in market share.

Yahoo is the No. 2 U.S. search engine, with 20.4% market share in April, according to market research group comScore. Microsoft continued to lag far behind with about 8% of the market, while rival Google Inc. (GOOG) increased its share by half a percentage point in April to 64.2% of the U.S. market, its highest level ever.
Shares in Yahoo closed down 2.7% at $16.19, while Microsoft fell 0.4% to $22.05. Google shares fell 1.3% to $438.77 and Time Warner was up 2.4% at $25.91.

By Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118; scott.morrison@dowjones.com

So, think twice before visiting a website which you typed (or clicked!) that is from Google. Maybe you shouldn’t visit Google anymore.