The "xyz company" software application development Google game

I blogged some time back now that in nearly a decade of specialising in software application development journalism I am yet to receive a phone call from Hewlett Packard.

While I was under the impression that this means the company does not in fact make any software, it turns out that they do and I've been enjoying reading their enterprise-level application development services pages for some time now.

So this got me thinking, what would happen if I Googled "HP software application development" just to make sure? Well, the first link appears to be HP Application Developer Training – well, there's a turn up for the books. Software engineering is nothing without skills and HP seems to be resolutely proud of its curriculum paths and developer certification options. Well done indeed chaps and by the way I love your sauce too.

How about "Sun software application development" then? Oh, no surprise – you're straight into Oracle messages there. Replace "Sun" with "Java" though and thankfully you're straight into the Sun Developer Network pages and data resources for Java technology.

IBM's search results seem to be the most consistent of the bunch with ALL of the links belonging to IBM and Rational rather than news sites, analysts and other hangers on. Perhaps that's no surprise, I seem to remember that IBM is quite big isn't it?

Curiously, Big Blue also scores the number one hit for the search "bad software application development" – but not for any negative reason so don't think I am spreading muck OK?

Of course there are variants to this game. You can switch the company name with a software methodology or operating system. Strangely, inserting the word Linux brings up the first link as an article entitled, "Linux GUI Application Development for Windows Programmers," and I'm not quite sure how that happened.

Moving on, cloud computing software application development and virtualization software application development seem to produce a real mixed bag of results for these arguably still-nascent technologies. Although Salesforce.com seem to score pretty well in the cloud stakes, go figure.

Inevitably, I have to end with "Windows software application development" don't I? I have to say that I was surprised with the search results as almost none of them come from Microsoft or the MSDN. In fact, the first link is from Embarcadero.

I guess the results could change depending on which browser you are using and on which system. So for the record I looked this lot up on a MacBook Pro OS X 10.5.8 using Safari 4.0.5 OK?

… and finally.

So to close I have to mention that if you simply Google the term "software application development", I am rather happy to tell you that you will land up exactly here on ZDNetUK's pages!