Is Google becoming the Internet/Is the Internet becoming Google?
Getting beyond anti-trust and competition law questions, and beyond good and evil, I wonder how Google's rise as a platform through which millions experience the Internet every day means that for much of the world (North America and Western Europe, mostly), Google and the Internet are merging. In other words, what happens when we can't or won't experience the Internet without using Google as a filter, enabler, editor, and source of software (can you tell I have been immersing myself in Nick's work of late?).
In fact, Nick's article in the Atlantic from the summer, "Is Google Making us Stupid?" made me consider this question. The article actually made the case that fundamental features of Web culture are affecting our cognitive habits. It did not directly address the behavior of Google per se. So is Google a proxy for the Internet?
It's becoming mine. I recently had computer problems and took my laptop in for repair. They asked if I wanted my data saved... I almost said yes. Then I realized that everything I have to have is on Google Docs. Then I realized I haven't used MS Office in ages... I've been using Google Docs.
And... I Google, I don't "search." The same way I Xerox and don't "make copies."
It's definitely my series of tubes. It's on my tubebar right now.
January 15, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not really. But most of my stuff has moved to the cloud.
January 16, 2009 3:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
As you say, " It did not directly address the behavior of Google per se."
So no, it's not becoming proxy for the Internet any more than people want to make it. Google is only one portal to the behaviors described in that piece. It would also include Journal databases, the Wiki, the great interlinking system of blogs. I don't start at Google for everything.
I also take umbrage with the article's premise. His anecdotes of decreased attention span are not something I experience. I still easily get lost in books. One difference I have noticed, however, is that in reading particular types of books, I make a mental file as I go of things I want to "Google" later.
But again, it depends on the book. I don't do that with all pieces. Examples. Read The Giver over the holidays. Easily absorbed into the book. Read it without putting it down. Of course, it's an easy, short read.
Also read Vonnegut's Timequake. I made that mental file while reading it, which I credit to his writing style. Specifically, he mentioned a photograph that textbooks often use to show immigrants arriving in the U.S. It's actually a photograph of immigrants boarding a ship leaving the U.S.
If the World Wide Web didn't exist, that would have just been a passing piece of information. How would I ever find it? But I had the Google. Through some mix of search terms, something like, "photograph immigrants arriving leaving textbooks", I found that it was Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage."
Another piece of knowledge I now have thanks to the WWW.
But I understand the piece is about cognition processes. We skim on the Internet, we don't read. Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I find it incredibly difficult to extended pieces of text online.
From the article:
I used educational databases online quite frequently. I skim, read abstracts, and search terms to find what I'm looking for. When I find what I'm looking for, I save it. And then I print it out, and read it the old-fashioned way. I do the same with books. I often use Google Books. If I determine I only need a few pages from the book, then I leave it at that. If I determine it would be a good book to read from cover to cover, even if the full text is available online, I'll get the real book.
Aside from the comfort of turning pages and the kinesthetic experience of reading a book, there's a difference in reading off the page and reading off the screen. The latter is much more difficult. And I'm not the only one. I don't know whether that's because of the light from the monitor, the typeface, or what.
Still. Though my reading online does differ from traditional reading, the WWW exposes me to a range of reading materials (even when I download and print them) that I would not otherwise have. Thousands, if not millions of journal articles at my fingertips, that I would likely not spend hours in libraries digging out. Books that I wouldn't know existed were it not for the Internet. And so on.
January 16, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
The reasons for Google's success are simply that virtually every other website is run by idiots. As someone who has worked on and with the internet for over 15 years, why is it such a difficult concept for people to understand that when I want to search for something that's ALL I want to see or do? I don't want Brittany. I don't want the day's top gossip. I ONLY WANT TO DO WHAT I WANT and I DONT WANT INTRUSIVE ADS along the way. Does Google advertise? You betcha! But they do so in a way that inobstrusive, NONGRAPHIC and unencombering.
It is painstaking in the breadth of stupidity of most webmasters. They are drunk on the koolaid of graphics and video. Stuff it! Study the Google model, and you'll come to understand the genius of its "dragnet" design. The facts, just the facts, and nothing but the facts. Keep Brittany OFF my home pages!
Webmasters have been hypnotized into thinking graphics and video sell. While very measure to the contrary shows otherwise. It may come as a shock, but not every internet user is of pre-college age with unlimited broadband access.
Yahoo email is VASTLY superior to GMAIL, but do I use it? Rarely, because it throws so much extraneous content at me I'd rather live with Gmail's eccentricities.
When you shop at the grocery store, do you want to buy bed linens? Of course not, but that's the mentality behind virtually every for profit website except Google and perhaps Amazon. Does Amazon throw content at you? Yeah, but it's pretty much based on your prior interactions with Amazon and is WAY less offensive.
Rant all you want about Google, but because of it we have information at our fingertips that would have been the envy of every generation before ours. And they do so in a way that serves both our needs and their exquisitely well.
Furthermore, there are few organizations on this planet outside of Amnesty International that have the well-being of its actions built into every model it creates.
Has Google changed the nature of research? Of course it has, but just as an AK-47 is superior to a bow and arrow, the standards of its use much correlate with the advancement of technology. It isn't that Google is making us more stupid, but that our standards for research have become more lax.
January 17, 2009 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink