Town gains 15 minutes of fame after renaming itself ‘Google’

Nowadays, people try anything to publicize themselves, be it from reality television to sex tapes to Youtube.com.

Shamefully, a lot of the time it works. Think of how famous the cast of MTV’s “The Jersey Shore” is now. Think about Kim Kardashian and the Numa-Numa guy.
It’s funny how an entire town can pull a similar stunt.

In one of my favorite movies and books, “Fight Club,” the narrator says that in the future, when space exploration escalates, corporations will get to name everything, like the IBM Stellar Sphere and Planet Starbucks.

Turns out, the future is now — in a way — even though we’re not planning to fly to the moon anytime soon. But who would’ve guessed that there would be a Google, Kan.
In an effort to become apart of Google’s fiber-optic broadband testing, the town of Topeka, Kan. renamed itself Google earlier this week.

This new broadband system is claimed to be 100 times faster than what American consumers are used to. Consequently, the new prototype has gotten some attention and a few towns across the country have started vying online for Google’s testing of the product.

None went as far to name itself Google, except the town formerly known as Topeka.
The name-change is temporary, however, only lasting for the month of March. Then, Google, Kan. will most likely go back to being just Topeka. Still, the notion of renaming a town is not entirely original.

For instance, previously, a town in Texas called Clark renamed itself DISH after EchoStar’s stock exchange ticker for free television.

This makes the out-of-control marketing that’s brought about Company X halftime shows and Company Y arenas look almost trivial. Somewhere there’s irony in that the townspeople of Google, Kan. (Googleans? Googlenesse?) collectively agreed to it.
Successfully, like reality TV stars, Topeka has drawn some attention and not just from Google.

Like a town called Halfway in Oregon, which renamed itself Half.com during the dot-com boom, the name change serves as a publicity stunt for the town and the company.
Google may not bestow is coveted super fiber-optic broadband on Topeka — I mean, Google — but the company loves the free advertising.

Yet, like the guidos on “The Jersey Shore,” Kim Kardashian and Numa-Numa guy, Google, Kan. will only get its proverbial 15 minutes, before the town returns to a piece of trivia; think Dorothy and Toto.

— Mitchell Woll is a senior journalism major and a sports reporter for The Mirror.