Google Feud

Google’s hilarious autocomplete suggestions have been turned into a game

"Google Feud But it's not very fun"

For anyone who's ever taken a screenshot of a strange Google autocomplete suggestion, or realized the rest of the world was also staying up late conducting internet research on body hair, here's a game for you. It's called Google Feud, and it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Like Family Feud, the game presents the first half of a phrase and players must guess the second half based on their limited knowledge of what the rest of the human race is thinking.

Users collect what seem to be arbitrarily determined points for each correct answer. The game gathers answers from Google's API, so the results are a real-time depiction of what the world is Googling. Problem is, trying to guess the second half of a phrase gets dull pretty quickly, and if you win, all you get is a vague satisfaction that you're tuned into the thoughts of the internet. The site also features a very realistic warning message: "Beware, certain results may be offensive and/or incomprehensible."

If you're in the habit of Googling every single question that pops into your head — be it pressing and serious, embarrassingly trivial, or even just weird — you may have an edge when it comes to the internet's new favourite-thing-ever-of-the-day. Introducing Google Feud: A free, online quiz game that fuses Google autocomplete predictions with the long-running TV game-show Family Feud (though it is an independent project and not affiliated with either company.) While there aren't any teammates, cash prizes or moustachioed hosts involved, Google Feud is essentially played exactly like its namesake is. Players are presented with a question and a board of concealed "answers" that they need to guess accurately before striking out three times. Each strike means a big red "X" for whoever's playing. Three red X's means you're out. Unlike a traditional game of Family Feud, however, the answers on this game's board aren't based on responses to an audience survey.

They're based on real-time Google autocomplete suggestions, which as anyone who pays attention to what pops up in the search bar while they're typing well knows, can be as disturbing as they are hilarious.

"Google Feud is a web game based on the Google API. We select the questions, then the results are pulled instantly from Google's autocomplete," reads an about section on the game's website. "​Beware, certain results may be offensive and/or incomprehensible."

With millions of people using Google to search the web every day, the top autocomplete suggestions on any given term are significantly harder to guess than the top answers given by a few hundred game show audience members would be. Some players are actually finding the game a bit too challenging because of this fact. But for everyone griping about how hard Google Feud is to play, there are dozens more raving about the game on Twitter — and likely even more too busy playing it right now to even weigh in. So many people have been playing the game since it started going viral that its website actually crashed under an influx of traffic on Thursday evening, just a few hours after it hit Buzzfeed.

The game's creator, writer Justin Hook, foreshadowed the impending crash on Twitter shortly before it happened. "Thanks, everyone playing Google Feud! And by 'thanks' I mean 'Ahh!! You're killing our servers!!'" he wrote. "Doing our best to keep up..." At 5:45 p.m. ET, Hook officially announced that his site was down. "Sorry, all, Google Feud is temporarily down," he tweeted. "Host @ASmallOrange, is demanding large sums of money. Not even letting me post an error page." Fortunately for everyone who was crushed by losing access to the game, it was back online about an hour later.

You can play Google Feud if you're up for the challenge, and can avoid freaking out when you see that "Costanza" doesn't even crack the top 10 autocomplete suggestions for the word "George." We couldn't.