Written by Dexter on April 1st, 2010

Press Releases

The City of Google?

Where in the world is Topeka?  This is the question many people are asking on April 1, 2010 when they woke up and opened their Internet browser to Google.com and saw the name Topeka instead of the familiar Google logo.

On clicking on the Google-colored logo, we see Google’s explanation of the name change as “A different kind of company name”.  The story goes like this: “4/01/2010 12:01:00 AM- Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.”

Now this is obviously someone’s idea of an April Fools Prank and the name will obviously change back to Google on 4/02/2010 12:01:00 AM but it still left me with the question: Where in the world is Topeka? 

To resolve my nagging curiosity, the first thing I did was a Google Maps search for “Topeka, KS”.  I was eventually drawn to a city in the North East of Kansas state with a population of 122,000 inhabitants.  The Map shows a city map of Topeka with expressways, main roads and streets, Forbes Field Airport (IATA code: FOE) is located 6 mi (10 km) south of the central business district of Topeka.

Next I did Google/Topeka search on Topeka and discovered that Topeka is one of hundreds of communities competing to host Google’s broadband experiment, which is designed to bring super-fast Internet service to residents. Topeka went to great lengths to show Google how much it wants to win the competition: the city council voted 9-0 to change the city’s name to Google during the month of March.

Then, once you got past all the stories on the April fool’s prank, and get to the “Internet Bible”, also know and Wikipedia, you got to learn some very interesting facts about Topeka.  For instance, Topeka is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County.  Also, Topeka means “to dig good potatoes” in the languages of the Kansa and the Ioway. The potato referred to is the prairie potato, Psoralea esculenta, a perennial herb which is an important food for many Native Americans. As a place name, Topeka was first recorded in 1826 as the Kansa name for what is now called the Kansas River. Topeka’s founders chose the name in 1855 because it “was novel, of Indian origin and euphonious of sound.”  The city, laid out in 1854, was one of the Free-State towns founded by Eastern antislavery men immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. In 1857, Topeka was chartered as a city.

So, congratulations Topekans.  Or should I say Googleans?  You have won the contest on what it really means to become a citizen of GoogleLand.  By the way, I was able to access the city’s website and noticed that they had not changed the city’s logo back to “Topeka”.   I imagine that their broadband services are overwhelmed today and they just haven’t gotten around to updating their website.  Way to go Mayor Bill Bunton “We’re back to being Topeka” on Thursday. “Now there are two Topeka’s.”  Perhaps you meant, “Now there are two Googles”.