• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, May 7, 2007

I spent the afternoon last Thursday at Google's New York offices, attending a conference of sorts about Google and how it can help auto parts and services companies sell parts and services online. But I'm not going to write about that because it's not nearly as interesting as Google the place.

Inside Google headquarters, one has the distinct feeling of no longer being on Earth. The feeling is, rather, that one has entered Google Earth, a Lewis Carroll-like world with a touch of Teletubbies. And Google Earth also bears some resemblance, just a passing one, to the distant future of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, in which the white-robed Eloi wander about -- I don't know -- dreaming i-dreams and eating food that sort of appears on platters.

And the food at Google really is amazing. Really. Amazing. It's five-star, or six-star food, and it's free, and ubiquitous, and cornucopious, which I just made up, but we're talking Internet here so language and reality is malleable.

I found out that one is, in fact, required to eat, and eat constantly. You've probably heard of the "Google 15." If you haven't, that refers to the 15 pounds one is required to gain within the first week of employment. If you don't gain it, I was told by a source, they put a funnel down your throat and feed you like a French goose.

I encourage all of you to find a way to get into Google Earth -- get an invite, present something, offer something, make a friend. And then excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, but go to the lunchroom instead. Then hide, and never actually leave.

The place is staffed by a race of callow teenagers in yellow converse sneakers speaking to each other in a language that is utterly incomprehensible. It's English, but spoken in a clipped dialect that one can only describe as a cross between Hollywood Hills and Yorkshire, England.

This, I found out, is Silicon English, and it is grammatically identical to what you and I speak, save for one peculiarity: Every sentence begins with "So."

That linguistic evolution comes, I learned from my source, from having to explain Internet arcana to Idiots. EG:

"Can you deliver dynamic widgets to my web site while transmigrating me to a 12th-century Moorish harem?"

"So, our Widgets,
which we call Gadgets,
can be jiggered in Java
to handle applets
but if Peter Piper picks a program
that doesn't match our matrices
then the Google Gadget
will treat your site
like a Montague treats a Capulet."

Maybe it's my imagination -- but i could swear I saw at least a few of these kids at another Internet company just two weeks ago. I believe they move around. One week they're at Microsoft. Next week they're at, I don't know, Nintendo.

So ... like, at Google, there are Razor Scooters everywhere that one is meant to ride from cubicle to cubicle, and free candy, nuts, a frightening array of coffees and various injectible drugs. And every once in a while, inexplicably, one is confronted by an immense rubber bouncy ball appearing from one hall and vanishing down another. Maybe it was one of the fruit-infusion drinks I had, or just the inherently hallucinogenic quality of all things Internet, but during a break, I staggered off looking for a bathroom, wandered down the wrong hall and was met by a large rabbit with a pocket watch in pink converse sneakers who said "So ... I'm late, I'm late," and sprinted off in the other direction.

Anyway, we learned about a lot of products Google has now or is coming out with soon: Google Words, and Adsense, and Google Audio, and iGoogle, to name a few. And, of course, that wonderful Google Earth where you can see the house you grew up in. The following is embargoed, but I can't resist:

• Google Mars. We've seen everything on Earth, time to move on.
• Google Rove: A desktop gadget that lets you see, in real time, what Karl Rove is actually doing every day, and automatically spiders all those missing e-mails.
• MeTube: Google Earth for hypochondriacs. Okay, you can show me my house from space. What about what's happening with my stomach?
• Google Spouse: This one's in development.