<story><title>Foobar</title><url>https://www.google.com/foobar/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rikverc</author><text>It is irritating because the &amp;quot;puzzle&amp;quot; involves having a history of searching for stuff that Google Foobar has tagged as relevant.&lt;p&gt;If your Google searches are not linked with your Google account or  if you search using different search engines, you&amp;#x27;re out of the game.</text></item><item><author>1945795</author><text>Why is this irritating?  Google won&amp;#x27;t hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.</text></item><item><author>bshimmin</author><text>I think this is very clever.  Assuming this is something to do with recruitment (as the other comments suggest), then of course I find it intensely irritating and it confirms my pre-existing notion that I would never want to work for a company like Google.  But, on the other hand, the people who devised this puzzle are clearly people who would be enticed by a puzzle like it, and would therefore think it was a good way to find like-minded people - and they are probably correct in that assumption.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asuffield</author><text>Disclaimer: my opinions are my own and not representing those of my employer or co-workers. I have no direct relationship to this project and haven&amp;#x27;t looked it up internally.&lt;p&gt;Has it occurred to any of you that we might do these things for &lt;i&gt;sheer fun&lt;/i&gt;, because doing that is not only allowed but celebrated?</text></comment>
<story><title>Foobar</title><url>https://www.google.com/foobar/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rikverc</author><text>It is irritating because the &amp;quot;puzzle&amp;quot; involves having a history of searching for stuff that Google Foobar has tagged as relevant.&lt;p&gt;If your Google searches are not linked with your Google account or  if you search using different search engines, you&amp;#x27;re out of the game.</text></item><item><author>1945795</author><text>Why is this irritating?  Google won&amp;#x27;t hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.</text></item><item><author>bshimmin</author><text>I think this is very clever.  Assuming this is something to do with recruitment (as the other comments suggest), then of course I find it intensely irritating and it confirms my pre-existing notion that I would never want to work for a company like Google.  But, on the other hand, the people who devised this puzzle are clearly people who would be enticed by a puzzle like it, and would therefore think it was a good way to find like-minded people - and they are probably correct in that assumption.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jen729w</author><text>Once again a reminder that Google is, er, a company, whose aim is to, er, make money.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not signed in to Google as a matter of course, and I block their ads, so I provide them very little value. As a result, I won&amp;#x27;t be able to use &amp;quot;foobar&amp;quot;, whatever the hell it is.&lt;p&gt;Seems fair. Isn&amp;#x27;t really &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; irritating, is it? :-)</text></comment>