Your Google stories: and some other ways we help people find things

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. If you missed the rest of the stories this week, check them out—and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

Of all the great stories people send us, some simply make us laugh and appreciate even more why we’re in the search business. For our final post in our series of your Google stories, we’re sharing three tales that we found particularly funny and unique. We hope they make for good Friday summer reading. Enjoy!

Just last month, Trichelle wrote about how Google helped with the rediscovery of a lost wallet:

Received: 7/18/2010
From: Trichelle
This isn't really a question but a great story I thought Google would be interested in hearing. Today I called my daughter in St. Louis and found out her friends that were suppose to be coming to see her in St. Louis were stuck in Chicago because the driver's keys and wallet were lost. They searched everywhere cancelled credit cards and tried to have a new car key made....but without ID could not. The group was getting angry at Brandon the one who lost the keys and wallet, and my daughter in St. Louis was highly disappointed because her friends she hadn't seen in a long time were not going to be able to come see her. Well I'm in Perry Georgia and decided to google "Brandon [Brandon’s last name] wallet". And low and behold the first thing that comes up is a Chicago Craigslist entry telling Brandon his wallet had been found and where he could pick it up. I then called Brandon and he and his wallet were reunited and now the group is on the way to my daughter in St. Louis For the record, after the fact I tried Yahoo and Bing and no wallet. Google rocks!

On to the next:

From: Usman
You ever hear a song that you wish you knew the name of? Usually you can just Google a few key lyrics to find the answer, but when the song has no lyrics, one has to get creative. This was the case a few years ago when I was tasked with finding out the name of that famous circus/carnival music, you know, with the calliope, like, the clown music people usually hum in situations when someone's just done something silly.. you know, it kind of goes like "doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do?" Sorta? Of course it's more likely that you'd recognize the tune if I could whistle it to you. Except everyone I'd whistled to, despite recognizing the tune, had no clue what the name of the song was. So, on a whim, I googled it. That is, I went to Google Search, typed in "doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do" (without quotes, even!), clicked "I'm Feeling Lucky"—and guess what? It's called "Entrance of the Gladiators"—also known as "Thunder and Blazes" -- by Czech composer Julius Fučík. Good ear, Google, good ear.

And finally ...

From: Michelle
I'm a librarian and I use Google all day every day. Today I helped a senior citizen find the telephone number of the company that made her frying pan. Her frying pan handle had broke and she wanted it replaced. She had actually brought the frying pan into the library where I work, because it had been many years since she had purchased it and didn't know who the manufacturer was. I searched the words on the underside of the pan and not only found the manufacturer, but found that the pan had a 50 year guarantee! One satisfied Library patron, thanks to Google.

We hope you enjoyed these stories as much as we did. We’ll work hard on making Google even more helpful, so that you’ll keep ‘em coming!

Posted by Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management and the search team