No offense to those living in Topeka, Kansas but it doesn’t always strike me as the most interesting of places from what little I know of the town.  

I was, however, happy to see that in their ultimate wisdom, the residents of Topeka, Kansas have decided to temporarily change the name of their town to Google, Kansas in an obvious and possibly effective marketing ploy to get “super-fast fibre-optic broadband” to their town, which has been put on Google’s list of places to receive upgrades.

The name change will last only until the end of March and this is not the first time that Topeka has taken the bull by the horns and changed its name. In an even more bizarre move in 1998, the name of the town was changed to ToPikachu, a character in a Japanese video game.

The idea for the name change to Google is largely credited to Jim Ogle who is the General Manager of a Google, Kansas television affiliate. Most of the residents of the town are pretty excited about the change and have written to their local newspaper to commend him for the idea.