Today in Rumors That Would Be Impossible to Explain to a Time-Traveler from 1990

Comments

Um, you do realize that Japanese teen girls had cell phones with ads and could use their cell phones to buy stuff at vending machines in the 90s, don't you?

It's only new HERE. The words, the concepts. People have been doing stuff like this in Finland and Japan for a long long time - we're way behind them.

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No, even further.

Face it, we're at BEST a large third-world nation now.

Will in Seattle on November 29, 2010 at 2:06 PM

They'll call it... GROOGLE!

STJA on November 29, 2010 at 2:33 PM

@1, you are stupid.

If you think WAP and i-mode were in any way comparable to modern smartphones like the iPhone and Droid, you're high. While it is true that they offered a sort-of internet experience on mobile phones, it was the 2000s, not the 90s, and that gap has long since been closed. People in Japan and Finland are going mad for...iPhones. American design.

Your understanding of how the world works stops in about 2003.

In addition, your comprehension of what this post is about -- which is Google and Groupon, not mobile phones, is unfeasibly low. I think there's something wrong with your brain chemistry. Have you been scanned for tumors?

Fnarf on November 29, 2010 at 2:44 PM

hahaha

Joe Szilagyi on November 29, 2010 at 3:03 PM

I'm picturing some kind of top-secret sterile technology lab, staffed entirely by Japanese girls in pervy school uniforms with knee-high Hello Kitty socks. What is their secret? How do they stay so far ahead of all rivals -- especially with all the time taken up by pillow fights and dance routines?

FeralTurnip on November 29, 2010 at 3:03 PM

did they buy with a Groupon?

scary tyler moore on November 29, 2010 at 3:52 PM

@3 hope you have fun paying 20 times what Japanese do for both bandwidth and data storage - or 40 times what people in South Korea pay for more bandwidth than we get in the US.

All your failure is belong to America. Exceptionalism my foot.

Will in Seattle on November 29, 2010 at 4:38 PM