I'm usually on in the mornings before I go to work.

Also, you are forgetting that there are not only abbreviations but also acronyms. You don't pronounce NATO "en-a-tee-oh", do you?

On a final note, am I the only one who's wondered about the fact that the abbreviation for "World Wide Web" takes three times as long to say as the thing it's supposed to be abbreviating? (9 syllables vs. 3)

I don't think World Wide Web was abbreviated to WWW for ease of saying, but rather for ease of writing - in which case we'd have to admit that it's a pretty useful abbreviation.

Only real advantage to pronouncing it GEE OH GEE is that you can sing it to the tune of ACDC's TNT

It sounds like ball gag.

The way it should be said...imperiously. Or perhaps over the top, a la Star Trek 2 Bill Shatner.

GOOOOOOOOOOOG!

I pronounce it as gog (like gog-gles or rhymes with dog) or Good Old Games to someone who doesn't know.

Maybe it's something with us Poles. I always pronounce it Gee-oh-gee.

I did read it. Most people I know prioritize saying things concisely over saying things "easily". I know the difficulty of sounds doesn't factor into my word choice. As for why gog sounds weird, maybe it's because English isn't your first language (assumption, but since you're from Denmark I think it's sound). There are many similar words in the English language (dog, cog, god, etc.), so I don't think its hard to believe that English speakers are fine with saying .og words. I think it's because often the context of saying WWW is when reciting a web address in which case saying "World Wide Web" would be somewhat deceptive, as entering it doesn't work. I say "dub dub dub" myself, as it's much faster.

Now that you're mentioning it, yeah, it is so.

Cos I'm
G.O.G.
I'm DRM-less
G.O.G.
Forums are a mess
G.O.G.
I've got a good team
G.O.G.
Fuck you, Steam

What he said.

Me too.

Gee-oh-gee sounds more like a shout when you are surprised/stunned or alike...

Like "Honey, i'm pregnant!" - "What? Gee! Oh... Gee!.. That's... wonderful!"... ;)

Damn, I forgot the sarcmark. People took that seriously :-/

Of course the abbreviation is for URLs, but as you say, it makes it cumbersome to say a URL aloud.

That's not a choice you can conciously make. Or at least it's not one that most people will even think to make, let alone have the presence of mind to stick with. Speaking is such a basic and instinctive thing that you really have little control over how you do it.

Since I'm a university student studying English language, literature and culture, it's about as close to a first language as it can get.

I don't think that pronouncing it "gog" has anything to do with being a native English speaker really. It probably has more to do with being a very active internet user, and thus being used to dealing with words that aren't words, odd acronyms and abbreviations, and people who use language that is barely even a human language.

I'm not going to do a study on it, but if someone were to do one, it wouldn't surprise me if the group of people who say "gog" have a higher frequency of people who use "lol" as a word in their "real-life" (why do we think the internet isn't real?) vocabulary, than the group of people who pronounce each letter seperately.

I think you're wrong there. I don't know how you pronounce `gog', but I hardly need to move my tongue at all, I can just puke it out with minimal effort, in sharp contrast with `gee ooh gee', where the tongue needs to move to make the i-o-i transition. Also, `-og' is an existing syllable in English, so the choice for `gog' is pretty natural. Though of course this depends on the phonological system of your native language.
Also, there's no such real rule for the pronunciation of abbreviations in language (though some stuffy bunch living in an isolated language fantasy world might have decided there is), nor is pronouncing GOG as `gog' and internet phenomenon. People have always been faced with pronouncing abbreviations (and unknown words) since writing was invented, and almost always choose the pronunciation that is most natural given their phonological system and lexicon.
And `gee ooh gee' sounds completely retarded.

Also Nanny Ogg

I never bother with the www these days, its an outdated relic of the early days when they thought we'd do things by service rather than by filetype and its pretty rare to see a website that actually NEEDS it