Let me google that for you...
This is the blog for March 11. I am getting it done early so I don’t have to deal with it later in the week. :)
The article “The Search Party” by Ken Auletta was published in the New Yorker in January of 2008. It examines the search engine Google and how it developed and the current controversies surrounding it. Auletta has a biography on the New Yorker webpage (biography). In this it discusses his stake from being previously involved in politics and he talks almost exclusively about communication. Clearly he is very well informed in the area, but I see serious biases as he works. It is hard to see some of his counterpoints and through his interviews; you see his points only through quotes from Google. Microsoft and other competitors have no quotes in the article. The claim that Auletta makes in this article is that Google’s expansion to D.C. and their lobbying operation was extremely important. The article starts with Google’s foundations of starting business and then talks about how it has been expanding faster and faster recently into many different avenues rather than just being a search engine. Google is quoted though as saying that they are “70% to the ‘core’ mission of providing a search engine and our advertising network.” This meaning that although they also deal with “Gmail” and their “apps” they are still focused on the premise of being the best search engine. The article discusses how Google strongly believes that the users are most important in many cases they quote some of the heads as saying we do what is best for our users. It also glances over the idea of Google collecting personal information and how they store it “safely” and to make the interactions more accurate with their searches.
This article is severely one-sided. I don’t really mind that they store my data because it is useful. I may have to search specifically for something one time, but after that, I am able to be more general the succeeding times. I love this feature. However, I don’t think that Google should be so cavalier about the storage. I think that standing up to the government and to not give them information was very wrong since they could have stopped people with illegal pornography. I am glad that they are careful with the information though since it does protect its users. Besides, then our government may spend time hunting down people who were just doing searches as jokes. The article starts discussing how Google is getting more involved with phones and this shows how it is dated. I think that re-examining this article would prove very interesting and if I had more time, I might do some research on it. I know that the Droid by Google is a very popular phone (our teacher loves hers :) ). I think that looking at Google as compared to Bing would be interesting now since Bing launched in the summer of last year. In Auletta’s biography it also lists his recent articles. Guess what? He wrote about Bing. (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/10/bing-of-the-hill.html) I think that it is great how technology and media are so fast to catch up with what we want to see and learn about. My opinions of Google are still the same after reading this article although I think that it is kind of odd to have the whole company really run by 3 people. Honestly, after I became a billionaire at the beginning of Google, I would have sold my spot to someone else and taken my money and retired. One more thing about Bing, I have problems that their ads show really cool features…that aren’t actually available. I wanted to use the when to buy plane tickets feature and it isn’t available (or I am just too stupid to figure out how to use it) for many cities. I like that Google is more to the point than the other engines as well.
By the way, the first thing I am doing when they invent time machines is going to buy serious stock in Google.
Question Time!
1. What do you use for a search engine and why? What makes this one that you use better than the others?
2. What is your opinion of Google keeping people’s search records and do you think they should be available to the government? Why or why not?
3. Do you see Google trying to stretch itself too thin by invading so many areas of technology (advertising, searching, phones, etc.)? Or will this be a good thing for them and they will become even more powerful? (they were in the top ten of richest corporations when this article was pubished)
4 comments:
Google is a very powerful company that will one day take over the world. It will in no way be bad for the company to spread out to other areas besides search engines, because they have such great programmers that no matter what they make it will be top of the line. As far as information goes, this is what will allow them to take over the world; excuse the use of such a clichéd statement, but knowledge is power. It works now, because there are honest people in charge that truly just want to help by making things easier to find (and why not make a little money on the side). Once the wrong person gets in charge though, they will have all the world’s information at their fingertips. Some doubt that this would ever happen, but just look at how Cheney manipulated the amazing system that our founding fathers created…Big Brother is watching…
Nice Orwell reference Karl. Anyway I would have to say that I don’t believe that Google is stretching itself too thin in the least. As it was cited, top 10 or not, they are an exceedingly powerful corporation who can simply hire more programmers, who are dying to work for them, to continue to create top of the line products. The very word “google” has become a verb in our society. It is that ingrained, and to not know what Google is in today’s world, would require that you lived under a rock since 1998 (I will let you know that I had to search Google to find this date). Expanding their products will only lead to more profit for Google, as well as repute because they are not delivering products that are substandard and full of bugs (that I know of). I believe Karl is using a bit of a hyperbole when he says that Google will eventually take over the world based on the fact that knowledge is power alone. The people who run and created Google are truly intelligent, however it is not as if they actually know all the things their search engine can find. The issue with people’s private information is another side of the coin entirely though. Access to that kind of information could potentially give someone power over countless people’s financial records, buying habits and blackmail worthy information. I don’t think Google will one day rule the world but I do foresee some kind of scandal in their near future, whether this will put them out of business depends on the severity of the scandal.
For the mapping assignment I track my internet usage on my phone; Catmail, a specific version of Gmail, was the first most used, Google search was the second, and YouTube was the third. Google obviously connects me to the world and is my preferred search finder. Google really seems to have their kinks worked out, unlike as you mentioned,Kaitline, Bing advertises a feature, but fails to deliver it.
As Auletta mentioned in the article Google has an excellent corporate structure with competitive employment. Hiring the brightest engineers and giving awesome incentives definitely seems to be working in motivating employees to strategize, develop and implement products of excellent products. I think they’re expansion into other fields has faced challenges that any company would have and although it seems to becoming too broad, they are essentially focusing on the fundamental goal to facilitate information sharing; whether it be customer data to companies that advertise, sharing video media through YouTube, or helping droids users stay connected to the world.
I am a big fan of the various Google applications, like Google Earth and Google Documents, so I definitely like the fact that they are spreading out into other technologies. I think that I would be against most any other company doing this, but Google is different, mostly because their entire business structure appears to be less profit-oriented than most other businesses, especially online ones. When I look at the technologies that they publish, I see that it is all free, high quality, user-friendly, and almost entirely ad-free. From my point of view, Google is just a search engine that is totally dedicated to the benefit of it's users, regardless of profits. They just happen to make a lot of money as a consequence of being the foundation of modern internet use.
What scares me, though, is what Google could do if they wanted to....
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