Happy Pixels

We usually teach kids the alphabet by having them remember common words that start with each letter: A is for Apple, B is for Balloon, C is for Crayon... but what if we wanted to update our notion of "common word" with, let's say, the autocomplete feature of Google search? Here's what we get:

Amazon
Best buy
Craigslist
Dictionary
Ebay
Facebook
Google
Hotmail
Imdb
Jcpenney
Kohls
Lowes
Myspace
Netflix
Orkut
Photobucket
Quotes
Runescape
Sears
Target
Utube
Verizon wireless
Walmart
Xbox 360
Youtube
Zappos

Well... seeing the list, I'm starting to think it's a bad idea. I also can't believe that the most common search word starting with a "U" is "utube"... that's quite a sad fact.

Note: this is based on the autocomplete feature of Google in the US. The same experiment on google.fr or google.it for example give different results.