Proof absolute that Google' tentacles extend across the world's surface, touching even the most humble of God's creatures comes with the news that a California entomologist has named a species of ant after the search monolith.

Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences dubbed a newly-discovered species of Madagascan ant Proceratium google because he was "impressed with the support he got from the Google Earth team when he was integrating the online warehouse of ant data, AntWeb, with the search functions of Google Earth", as Popular Science explains.

Yes, that's right. Thanks to Google Earth, scientists can now "plot ant habitats in three dimensions or search for ant species by location", which is a good thing. We think. ®