The moment Google announced it was letting users download their entire search histories, I clicked — and downloaded a cache of 128,948 searches, the sum total of my last 12 years, five months, one week and three days online. I fully expected to be reminded of those repeated requests for ‘‘Finnish gymnastics’’ and ‘‘comorbidity of insomnia and brain lesioning,’’ but what surprised me was how regularly I searched for other search engines: ‘‘alternative search engines,’’ ‘‘alt search engines,’’ ‘‘search engines that aren’t Google,’’ ‘‘search engines better than Google.’’

谷歌(Google)刚一宣布用户可以下载完整的历史搜索记录，我就去点了——于是下载了128948条搜索缓存，这是我过去总在网时长——12年5个月1周零3天——的搜索量。我期待着被一些重复的词条提醒：“芬兰体操”、“失眠共病与脑损伤”。然而让我感到惊讶的是，我搜索其他搜索引擎的频率竟如此之高：“其他搜索引擎”、“替代搜索引擎”、“除谷歌以外的搜索引擎”、“比谷歌好用的搜索引擎”。

That’s how I first found my way to Mystery Google, a site that within a year of its introduction in 2009 rebranded itself as Mystery Seeker, the name under which it still operates. The site, in any iteration, has always been an enigma. It’s not clear who founded it, or who runs it, or whether it changed its name because Google threatened legal action or just acquired the domain. By contrast, what the site does is remarkably transparent. You type what you please and click Search; what you get in return are the results for the last query given to the site.

我就是这样发现了“Mystery Google”。它上线于2009年，在不到一年时间里重新做了品牌推广，更名为“Mystery Seeker”，现在也还叫这个名字。不管叫什么，这个网站一直都是一个谜。创建它的人未知，运营它的人未知，更不知道更名是否是迫于谷歌的法律威胁，还是谷歌吞掉了这个域名。与此相反的是，这个网站的工作机制很容易理解。用户随便敲进去什么喜欢的东西，点击“搜索”，收到的结果是网站收到的最后一个搜索请求的结果。

For example, just now I typed “Who runs Mystery Seeker?” and received results for ‘‘lesbian kittens’’ — apparently the request of the user just before me. The site is an exercise in collective perversion, an antisocial yet communitarian prank. You have to give before you receive, so while I began every session trying to baffle the subsequent seeker, I always ended up off-site, having been outclassed by a stranger: pages on Lincoln-assassination conspiracy theories, Nazi time travel, Mesoamerican apocalypse prophecies and, inevitably, pornography.

举个例子，现在，我打入“运营Mystery Seeker的人是谁？”，收到的结果是关于“同性恋小母猫”的搜索内容——显然，我之前的一个用户搜索了这个词条。这个网站是一个集体变态下的行为，一种反社会但又彼此相交流的恶作剧。收到结果之前，你必须给予结果，每次我开始想要给下一个搜索者制造点困惑，我都被陌生人比下去，以出局收场：刺杀林肯阴谋论的文献资料，穿越到纳粹，中美洲末日预言，还有无法避免地，色情。

Whenever the results I got were smutty, or racist, I’d respond — I flattered myself that I was responding — by searching for ‘‘feminism’’ or ‘‘peculiar institution.’’ If I got results pertaining to ‘‘Mad Men’’ or ‘‘The Office,’’ the next search I’d log would be for Shostakovich or Goya. These were feeble, futile gestures, of course, self-congratulatory exercises in compensatory karma. I was telling my successor to get some culture. I should’ve been telling myself to get a life.

只要得到荤一点的结果，或者种族主义的，我都会回应——我让自己觉得我是在回应——通过搜索“女性主义”或者“奴隶制度”。如果我得到了《广告狂人》(Mad Men)和《办公室》(The Office)的搜索结果，我的下一条搜索会是“肖斯塔科维奇”或“戈雅”。这些是羸弱而又无意义的举动，当然，也是一种自吹自擂的自作自受。我是要告诉我的下一位，有点文化吧。其实我也应该告诉自己，有点生活吧。

At the same time, I was investigating the more practical, or just more traditional, alternatives to Google: Bing (owned by Microsoft), Yahoo (operated by Google back then and by Bing now), Info.com (an aggregator of Yahoo/Bing, Google and others) and newer sites like DuckDuckGo and IxQuick (which don’t track your search history), Gibiru and Unbubble (which don’t censor results) and Wolfram Alpha (which curates results).

与此同时，我确实在深入研究更加实用，或者说更加传统的谷歌替代品：微软所有的必应(Bing)，以前由谷歌运营而现在归于必应的雅虎(Yahoo)，雅虎、必应、谷歌和其他引擎的集合品Info.com，还有一些新一点的网站，如DuckDuckGo和IxQuick。IxQuick不记载用户的搜索历史，另外还有Gibiru和Unbubble，不审查结果审查，以及对结果进行编排处理Wolfram Alpha。

They were all too organized, too logical — the results were all the same, with only slight differences in the order of their presentation. It seemed to me that the Search Engine of Tomorow couldn’t be concerned with the best way to find what users were searching for, but with the best way to find what users didn’t even know they were searching for.

不过这些都太过组织化、逻辑化，它们的搜索结果都差不多，仅在展示的顺序上有细微差别。对我来说，未来的搜索引擎不是去搀和着研究什么最好的方式，以知道用户在搜索什么，而是去研究用户自己都不知道他们在搜索的东西。

Among the more entertaining challengers was Bananaslug.com: You type in a word and choose a category — Archetypes, Colors, Emotions — from which the site selects its own word to search in tandem. For instance, I typed in ‘‘Guantánamo’’ and chose the category Jargon Words; the site appended the word ‘‘parse.’’ The results of this collaboration comprised two types of hits: op-eds about the effects of closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and op-eds about the effects of keeping it open. Both sides found the future difficult to parse.

存在一些更具娱乐精神的挑战者，Bananaslug.com是其中之一：你敲进去一个词，选择一个种类——原型，颜色，情绪——从你选择的种类里，这个网站会选择它自己的关键词来叠加搜索。比如，我就敲进去“关塔那摩”，然后选择“行业术语”这个种类；网站会挑选“分析”。这样的结果是两个，一个是关闭关塔那摩监狱的观点，另一个是开放的观点。两边都觉得未来很难分析。

Millionshort.com elides the top 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or one million results of your search, providing more direct connection to less popular chatter. Wackosearch.com determines pertinence by impertinence: Search for “surrealism,” and get sites for the I.C.B.E. (the International Center for Bathroom Etiquette) and an online pregnancy test; search for “socialism,” get sites called Corpses for Sale or Create Farts, and feel proud that in America even irrelevancy is calculated — and while that irrelevancy is free, its method of calculation is proprietary.

Millionshort.com则会忽略用户搜索结果的前100、1000、10000、10000或1000000个，这样，它提供了一种联系，让用户接触到不那么流行的话语材料。Wackosearch.com则以不合理性定义合理性：搜索“超现实主义”，得到国际洗手间礼仪中心(the International Center for Bathroom Etiquette)，还有，一个线上怀孕测试；搜索“社会主义”，得到“待售死尸”(Corpses for Sale)和“制屁”(Create Farts)网站，然后你还会感到骄傲，因为在美国，连非相关结果都被计算了。虽然非相关结果是免费的，但这种计算方法是有专利的。

Today, most search engines can differentiate among the meanings of “free,” though I’m not always convinced their users can. Google might cost nothing to use, but it compiles dossiers on consumers that it charges advertisers to access. The hope, and the pleasure, of tinkering around with nonsensical search engines has always been the generation of nonsensical data: a man (me?) clicking links for what he doesn’t need or want (latex lederhosen?) can’t be marketed to. There was joy in this, a pubescent pride in having jammed the system and evaded its consequences. This was recreation as political act — or so it seemed.

如今，许多搜索引擎都可以区别“免费”这个词的多种含义，虽然我并不觉得他们的用户都能分辨其中的差别。使用谷歌可能不会花任何钱，但谷歌整理了关于用户的私密数据，并以这种档案的接近性向广告商要价。修改这些无意义的搜索结果的乐趣和希望在于，产生出无意义的数据：一个点击了他并不需要或者想要（上胶的皮短裤？）的链接的男人（我？），无法成为市场推广的目标了。这其中自有快乐，就像是一种青春期时期的自豪，给系统添点堵，并逃离后果。也像是类似政治行为的一种消遣——或者，看上去是吧。

But as I immersed myself in the workings of search as research for a novel, I became disabused of the idea. My mode of protest was too quixotic: A number of the alt-search engines I’ve mentioned are built on the Bing platform, or are ‘‘Powered by Google,’’ according to the tagline that such sites are required to display. After all, the biggest companies have the best algorithms; smaller sites merely engineer filters and tack their humor on.

不过，随着我慢慢像为一本小说做研究一样沉浸在这些搜索的运行原理中，我开始不这么信任这种想法了。我的反抗模式过于浮夸：从网站上被要求显示的标语中可以看到，好几个我提到的替代的搜索引擎，其实是在必应上建立的，或者由谷歌支持的。总之，最大的公司拥有最好的算法。小网站仅能够做些过滤，然后融入他们自己的幽默。

Even if the joke was on me, I liked it all the same. Besides, it was worth it for the education. I enjoyed the laughs; let them enjoy the data.

就算我自己成了一个笑话，也还是乐此不疲。无论如何，这个过程总值得学习。我享受这些笑点，那么，也让那些人去享受他们的数据吧。