But a stroke of luck led the classified ads person at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph to smell a potential story and refer him to the features desk.

FORBES: Employment

"The Internet is perfect for classified ads, " he says.

CNN: Meet you at the gumtree

The risk down the line is that Google could decide to cut out the middleman and solicit its own classified ads.

NPR: Google Base Poses a Dilemma for Businesses

Lonely-hearts ads in the newspapers are classified by caste and sub-caste.

ECONOMIST: The perilous arithmetic of positive discrimination

It is the Goliath of the Web, with search, e-mail, e-commerce, instant messaging, classified ads, and even its own virtual planet with Google Earth -- all adding up to one mega-market cap.

CNN: 15 years of the World Wide Web