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The unGoogle-ables: They didn't see the Internet coming

Software

The Internet has revolutionised work, study and even pub quizzes with the power to simply type a word into Google and discover the secrets of the world. Sadly, not everything is so easy to find... And so we salute the unGoogle-ables: those names so generic, so common or just plain weird that finding what you need is near-impossible.

It's in the interests of most companies, films and bands to have memorable names. Bands can afford names such as And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, films can get away with Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, but companies usually want to keep it brief. New-media companies quickly realised that a name must be unique -- hence Twitter, Flickr, Spotify and the like -- but back in the real world there's been some choices that will forever leave search engines scratching their heads.

Not every simple name is unGoogle-able, however. Mobile phone network 3, for example, hits the Holy Grail by being simple, direct and going straight to three.co.uk. But then there's the LG Arena. Google it and you'll discover it's more than a specific phone; it's an actual arena in, like, the Midlands or somewhere.

Of course, it's not just Google -- it could be Ask, Yahoo or AOL, or any one of those many search engines that frankly we could only find if we typed 'search engine' into Google. These are by no means the best or worst of the hard-to-find, they're just five of our favourites, from the railway that confused itself out of existence to the bands that everyone could say but no-one could find. If you've ever been stymied by the search box, let us know in the comments. Onwards!

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