Partly amusing and partly curious, earlier today I noticed quite a few hits from a Google-centric blog, Google Blogoscoped (Link). Turns out that Google has added “/rebang” to their robots.txt file indicating they don’t want spiders crawling through whatever it is they’re intending to add. I’ve already told people I’m not connected to Google, but someone posted a quote to something I said elsewhere (Link) that has me thinking maybe what *is* going on is at least related to the things I discuss here.

If you’re considering building a 3D interface – a Metaverse – then acquiring an app like SketchUp, letting people hook into your 3D app, and linking that thing to a kind of 3D Adsense (imagine the possibilities!) makes sense because then the whole thing has a means for funding its own growth. It’s a little like Second Life, only more open, more tied to the 2D Net, more tied to real world businesses (and their real locations) and more mainstream.

Someone else commented that the topics I discuss here sound “a bit like the whole speculation circling around Niniane Wang’s project“. I don’t know much about Ms. Wang, but her background at Microsoft (check out her resume – Link) makes it pretty easy to figure out what that speculation might be.

On the other hand, maybe Google is just going to stash every naughty image they can into a large database and use it as leverage for some upcoming elections.

{Update: Turns out that Google is just creating a popularity ranking system for their Chinese portal. Apparently “re bang” roughly translates into “hot rank” in Chinese. In the meantime, everyone seems to think the only service provided here is 3D modeling. How irritating.}