Rob Dubbin, a writer for “The Colbert Report”, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, Just Let Me Check One Last Thing…, on his attempt to last 24 hours without using any of Google’s services. The test was undertaken on the tenth anniversary of Google’s founding. It did not go well.

“I wish Google didn’t make me think of tentacles. It never did before I tried avoiding it for 24 hours — a doomed exercise that began as a challenge and morphed into a horror show.

This was supposed to be a birthday present to the Internet’s reigning brand — admittedly, an odd sort of gift for a company that so thrives on participation. Ten years ago today, on Sept. 7, 1998, Google was officially incorporated, beginning its historical march to ubiquity from a Silicon Valley garage. What better way to celebrate Google’s dominance — search, e-mail, chat, maps, news, calendars, Mars– than to abstain from its services entirely? ”