UnNews:Google buys the alphabet
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| Google buys the alphabet | 
|
11 August 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Tech wonder-workers Google have bought the alphabet and will now receive payment for every single letter used by Western civilization since the Phoenicians. All existing symbols or graphemes, as used by European languages since the days of the Greeks and Romans, will now belong to Google. This means that every word spelled in a newspaper or on a screen or mobile device will automatically create revenue for the San Francisco-based company.
"This is wonderful news for all those who want to invest in the alphabet," said Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "We discovered that no one owned the alphabet as such, so we bought it. So now it is the Alphabet. And remember, every time you write it down, it will cost you a micro payment or Bitcoins." Google may send a driverless car to run down users for non-payment.
So far, Page and Brin haven't said if words with letters that are merely spoken among passers-by in the street will be included as part of Google's ownership, but they said that is "something we will work on." The deal will not affect India, China, Japan and Saudi Arabia — unless they use the Western alphabet in any format. It is also unknown if the deal applies inside Russia, where many mirror images of letters are used in Cyrillic script. Conceivably, use of these backward characters could result in a credit back to one's account.
Private ownership of the alphabet could spur a revival of alternative methods of recording sounds and words. Shares in cuneiform, hieroglyphs, runes and gang signs may benefit, as people turn to alternatives to the alphabet to record the future.
"This is a big deal," said Microsoft owner Bill Gates. "Wish I had thought of it first." Happily, Gates may think of it first, in which co-payments to Microsoft could be achieved by an obligatory overnight software upgrade to Windows 10.
(This article cost 1155 Bitcoins).
Sources[edit]
- Staff "Google changes name to Alphabet". The Guardian, August 11, 2015