University students have reacted with shock after new figures revealed iDiscover displaced Google as the most visited search engine in 2018, with 1.3bn monthly users compared to Google’s 1.1bn.
iDiscover CEO Marcus Atherton said he was delighted by the news: “Given that the University of Cambridge itself only has approximately 20,000 students, I was a little surprised to find out we have over a billion users worldwide.”
“However, given iDiscover’s brilliant service and recent improvements, such progress cannot be described as unexpected.”
One explanation for iDiscover’s meteoric rise could be its unique and incredible ability to search deeper into a person’s mind, beyond what they themselves thought they wanted. Third year historian Emily Milton recounted her experiences with iDiscover: “I searched for medieval Irish literature, but iDiscover knew that what I really wanted was a French-language journal review of post-modernist Japanese poetry, only available in a college library I have no access to.”
Speaking from his office in Silicon Valley, Atherton revealed how he hoped to attract more users to iDiscover: “One of the things we’ve been discussing is a new slogan – suggestions currently on the table include iDiscover, therefore iAm and live, laugh, iDiscover.”
Meanwhile, other web giants have been looking to emulate iDiscover’s success. A spokesman for Amazon.com said today, “to improve customer satisfaction, we have decided to abolish Amazon Prime, our next day delivery service, and instead make all of our products only available on request in the UL reading room.”
The university revealed hopes today that iDiscover’s success may be just the beginning for Cambridge’s online platforms. Head of IT Stephen Parsley said “We have had excellent feedback about Moodle’s “time-out” feature, which reminds students just how long they’ve spent procrastinating.”