A young man left hometown 22 years ago, and turned out to be a poor correspondent<注2>. After a while his letters dried up<注3>, and for six years the family had heard nothing from him. Then his sister entered his name in the Google search engine<注4> on the Web and, as she says, " There he was on a bowling league<注5> in Brazil!" Now they're exchanging catch-up letters and photos.<注6>

　　Who knew Brazilian bowling leagues had Web sites? Google knew, because Google knows everything, or nearly.

　　The name comes from "googol," the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros.<注7> This means, "a hell of a lot more than there is in the universe."<注8> The Google people chose it because they want to organize all the data on the Web.

　　Google started in 1998, when two 26-year-olds , Sergei Brin and Larry Page, set up shop in a tiny office. Today they operate out of a building in Mountain View, Calif., and regional offices all over the world. Google has become the best and most successful search engine.

　　If you need a map of a region, Google will oblige<注9>. If you rip the rotator cuff in your shoulder,<注10> Google finds drawings that show you how it works. Should you wish to remember an Alex Colville<注11> painting, you may well find it among the 181 Colville images available. If you want to recall Churchill's photo, Banff, or Cary Grant,<注12> Google will show them to you, usually in dozens of versions.

　　An epidemiologist or social psychologist studying reactions to a phenomenon like the West Nile virus might well come here often,<注13> to learn what people are saying about it.

　　This section also provides a rich field for ego-surfing<注14>, or entering your own name to find out what is said about you. Some consider ego-surfing neurotic, and anyone who does it every day probably suffers from an identity problem.<注15>

　　The other day, unable to resist, I found that I've been mentioned about 500 times in the various chat rooms that Google monitors. This provided half an hour of innocent pleasure.

　　Google's news report links to 4,500 news sources around the world. On the screen it looks rather like a newspaper page, with pictures and headings, but it changes constantly as newspapers and broadcasters change what they put on the Web. A story gets on if enough newspapers run it and give it prominence.<注16> Every minute, the computers update the page and compile related stories while dropping others. No human editors decide what's to be emphasized. It sounds ridiculous, but it's not bad at all.

　　However Google is boastful<注17>. It can't keep itself from telling you how inconceivably fast it is. Ask it for information on Chinese archaeology and it compiles 29,400 links, adding: "search took 0.14 seconds."

　　Another problem is that identical names baffle Google.<注18> It needs help distinguishing between Francis Bacon, the 20th-century painter, and Francis Bacon, the 17th-century philosopher. Sometimes Google looks a little foolish.

　　Now that the verb "to Google" is embedded in the language,<注19> Googling has turned out to be, for some, a moral problem. A woman wrote to Randy Cohen, the New York Times ethicist, about a friend who had gone out with a doctor and then Googled him when she got home, discovering that he had been involved in several malpractice suits.<注20> Cohen was asked whether this was a decent<注21> thing to do. He said it was and that he had done it himself. The woman's Googling, Cohen said, was benign<注22>, just like asking her friends about this fellow.

　　Tired of Google? I'm afraid those who are tired of Google are tired of life.

　　2. a poor correspondent：懒于通信的人。

　　3. dry up:停止。

　　4. search engine:搜索引擎。

　　5. league：［体］俱乐部联合会。

　　6.现在他们互通信件和照片，弥补失去联系的那段时光。catch-up:有助于赶上的。

　　7.这个名字源于googol,它是表示1后面跟100个零的数学专有名词。googol：［数］大数，古戈尔(为10100的名称)。

　　8.它表示"比宇宙中的存在都多得多的数目"。

　　a hell of a lot: <口>远远，非常。

　　9. oblige：施恩惠，帮忙。

　　10. rip：撕裂；rotator cuff：［解］(肩关节囊的)肌腱套，旋转套。

　　11. Alex Colville：阿列克斯·科尔维利，加拿大画家。

　　12. Churchill：英国首相丘吉尔；Banff：即Banff National Park，班夫国家公园，位于加拿大阿尔伯达省西南部；Cary Grant：加里·格兰特，好莱坞著名影星。

　　13.研究人们对西尼罗病毒这样的现象有何反应的流行病学家或社会心理学家也应该经常光顾这儿。西尼罗病毒首次于1937年在乌干达西尼罗地区被发现，它能导致病毒性脑炎。

　　14. ego-surf:自我搜索，指在搜索引擎中输入自己的名字进行搜索。

　　15.有人认为自我搜索的人精神不正常，谁要每天这样做，多半是自我认知出了问题。

　　16. story: <美>(新闻)报道；get on:发迹，出人头地，这里指脱颖而出；give sth. prominence:使某事突出，此处指"一篇报道被置于突出位置"。

　　17. boastful：喜自夸的。

　　18.另一个问题是，同名同姓把Google给难住了。baffle:使困惑，难住。

　　19. Google(在Google上搜索)作为一个动词已经成了一个固定词汇。

　　20. go out：外出娱乐，与(异性)交好；malpractice：(医师或律师等专业人员因业务上处理不当、缺乏应有的专业知识或出于罪恶目的而使当事人遭受损害的)失职行为，治疗失当；suit：讼案，起诉。

　　21. decent：合适的，正派的。

　　22. benign：［医］(病等)无危险的，这里指并没什么危害。