I love Google.
Possibly too much. I’m an addict. If they had Google Anonymous, I would probably need to go.
This occurred to me one night when I asked my husband what we should have for dinner, and he responded, “I don’t know, but I’m sure you could find the answer on Google.”
I believe I can find the answer to anything on Google. I’m one of those people who helped Google become a verb.
Which is why it’s funny for me to think back to the day when I first met Google. My friend Heather had just come back to Benin from her home leave when we were Peace Corps volunteers.
“You’re not going to believe this thing they have now,” she said, in the conspiratorial way we talked now about the crazy things they were cooking up “over there” while we were in Africa. “It’s called Google, and you can find anything.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. I was just fine with my Excite search engine. And I felt that Google was probably some sort of a phase, much like I had thought the Internet would be when I first heard about that.
Little did I know that years later, my Homepage would default to Google, my e-mail address would be @gmail.com and I’d be shopping through Froogle while getting my news from Google News.
All of this, even though I’m fairly certain that the government is somehow using all of this information to spy on me.
It’s worth it. I’ll never go back, said I.
Until a few days ago, when Dollar Philanthropy turned me on to Goodsearch.
What, said I, surfing that serves? C’est possible?
Indeed, it is.
Goodsearch is a search engine, powered by Yahoo!, that gives approximately a penny per search to any charity or school when a user designates it as their favorite. To bring that to scale, if a charity has 100 supporters who each do two searches a day, the non-profit would earn about $730 a year. If you have 10,000 supporters, well, that would be $73,000.
Seek, and they shall fund, I guess.
So it’s time to re-align your homepage, switch search engines and get ready to give. Because as of today, Washington Area Women’s Foundation is listed as a non-profit on Goodsearch!
If I can make the switch, anyone can.
Just type in Washington Area on the home page, click Verify, and then search as you normally would.
You get information, and the good feeling of knowing that the more you learn, the more women’s programming in the Washington area earns!
So make the change. I did it, and the withdrawal symptoms have been minimal. I promise.
