How Devlin may have looked in 1989

By Staff Reporter Shengas McGlumphie

A man from Fintona has confirmed that he had the idea for Google in 1989, some nine years before the website was created by Larry Page and Serge Brin in America. Micky Devlin, 54, an unemployed postman from Fintona, said,

“I initially got the idea from watching ‘Blake’s 7’ in the 80s where they had this big computer yoke that Blake spoke to and it would talk back. Class. I suppose the idea bounced around in my brain for a few years before I had a light bulb moment – wouldn’t it be deadly if you could build like this massive computer thing in real life and not just off the telly, that let you find out anything you wanted to know about anything in the whole world, and all you had to do was speak to it or put it into a machine or a robot or something, and then they would answer it in a lock of minutes. So when I heard the other day that someone had actually built my idea I couldn’t believe it. Here we are in 2013 and hey presto, it’s a reality. That should really have been me. I would probably have called it Google too. I’m pretty up on the technologies with all the bookfaces and the sex texts and calculators and what not, and I’ve been using a fax machine for years.”

Questioned on whether he could also have written the complex algorithm which incorporates the several thousand metrics which makes Google such a unique search engine, Devlin was dismissive.

“Search engine? Don’t try to catch me out. I’ve been around engines all my life. When Richard Branson invented the jumbo jet did he arse about with all the detail before he put it together? Did he bollocks. That’s not the way it works. He just stripped down a couple of Masseys and the like, flung it all back together a different way and got lucky. You show me the Google search engine crankshaft and I’ll take it apart in a blink”.

Devlin is also watching closely to see if anyone produces a fully-functioning time machine after having watched several episodes of Doctor Who and developing his own ideas which he says would operate based on “dimensions and time warps and stuff”.