We all know that Santa Claus does his very best to make sure all of the "nice" children get toys at Christmas. He works all years making his toys and then spends Christmas Eve traveling the globe in his sleigh delivering the toys to all the good boys and girls around the world. But, what if Santa Claus worked for Google? Could he be doing things better?
Google Claus as the new improved Santa would now be known would make Christmas more fair. He would optimize his routes, his toy making and bring even more joy to the good , or should I say most popular, boys and girls of the world, but how?
The first step for Google Claus would be to figure out which kids are the most popular. We all know how school yard popularity works. The kids which are nicest, or coolest, or have the most friends are the most popular, but Google Claus can do better. Google Claus would not take the tried and true definition of popularity, it would use a new one. The kids who are known by the most kids would now become the most popular. The kids who other kids point at regularly would become the most popular kids of all and kids who talk a lot would also be extremely popular.
Now that Google Claus has re-defined kid popularity it must feed this into his new super computer to come up with a list of naughty and nice kids. Nice kids are the ones who gain their popularity naturally or at the very least in ways that Google Claus has not noticed are not very nice. Buying popularity is very frowned upon by Google Claus and you may even end up on the naughty list this way. Also, if an unpopular kid likes you you may be penalized by good old Google Claus and heaven forbid that you should like somebody who is unpopular or point at them. That is sure to get you in hot water at the new, more efficient North Pole.
Google Claus is very smart and comes up with an algorithm for figuring out this popularity equation. He also feeds in how much each kid talks (remember, talking is good) and even goes as far as to measure how much a kid repeats him/herself. Now, a little repetition is good, but once you surpass what Google Claus refers to as Rudolph's ratio, then it's frowned upon. So the kids who are constantly saying "are we there yet?" are not going to do as well as the kids who only say it say 3-5% of the time.
Since kids are constantly changing who they are pointing at and also constantly changing what they are talking about, good old Google Claus has trouble keeping up. The most popular kid in school this week might not even show up on the Google nicety radar next week. Especially if he starts pointing at a naughty kid, or pays somebody to like him.
I think we can all agree that Christmas will be much better off if Santa Claus just looks over his list with his nice cup of hot chocolate as is traditional and Google sticks to search engines.
