March 2007 - Anthroblogogy

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does google own the world?

March 30th 2007 19:59

your searching stops here?

is there no end to what google seem to have their fingers into? off the top of my head i can think of the almighty google search engine, google earth, adsense, and youtube. not to mention the multitudes of spin offs like google scholar, froogle, gmail, and blogger. without a doubt they are the world's largest search engine that i would dare say the majority of the world uses, and to be fair, it is a search engine that rarely lets me down in my never ending persuit for information. even as you read this blog entry, it is being endorsed by google adsense which is attempting to pay me with advertising money for my journalism efforts. they certainly are a force to be reckoned with and have established themselves as a super power within the information super highway. however as with all monopolies, it can't be a good thing all together.

one issue that springs to mind is the idea of censorship in one form. for example, when one does a search for a particular item, the search returns with an enormous amount of results and who is to say that is the best selection of information that is available? the potential sources are selected through a process of recent activity on the many webpages that the information is available on, along with the highest amount of links that correspond to this webpage. for a useful explanation of this refer to this blog post. so in a sense, it is popular information that is found and could potentially not be the best source for this information. not to mention that you, depending on your research skills of course, have to traul through possibly 20 000 000 internet pages. i would really like to meet anyone that has done this.

with this in mind, people that are uploading information really play on this, as is the trick of any web developer or online content manager. an industry in itself has been created around this practice and this could be seen as further distorting what could be conceived as the correct information. it must then be said that both the media producer and consumer should be wary of the information that they develop/consume, and must always keep an open mind to other avenues of information technology.

as we all instantly go to google for our information fixes, we have to be aware that there are alternative research options available to us that should be utilised from time to time. one fantastic example of this is the social bookmarking network of del.icio.us. as a creative online community, they utilise the importance of metadata and tags to link people together with what has been bookmarked.

an example of a del.icio.us blog summary

for example, i might find a website on bettie page. i can then go to del.icio.us and create a post on bettie page, save it, and it will then tell me who else in the del.icio.us network have also bookmarked this website. instantly i have access to an entire network of people that have a similar interest to bettie page and might have further information that i would be interested in.

i actually just did this and google simply gave me pages of information related to bettie page and her photos. del.icio.us said it was bookmarked by 26 other users, which then directed me to other areas such as 'pinups', 'burlesque', and 'dancers'. when i clicked on that it directed me towards another network which opened up into 'art' 'dada', and 'deco'. so furthering my initial availability of information again.

it might not be the style of research for everyone, but it is an alternative and could possibly take you to places you would never have previously gone before. free information. information for everyone.

Anthroblogogy - March 2007

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