Information Labor

The study on how Information Labor works

Primary Source: "Making Media Work" by Greg Downey

Secondary Source:  Classnotes, http://gdowney.wordpress.com/

This article examines the wide range of information labor that makes it possible for information to move across countries and to reset the information in new contexts. Mr. Downey based on his own research described three different forms of the idea of "jumping context": telegraph messenger boys, librarians and real time stenographers. Each of these variations, respectively played critical roles in moving information across contexts in ways the uninformed eye couldn't understand.

The value of information labor is critical to our information society. Without this invisible labor, information would not be able to move from one socio-technical infrastructure to another and knowledge, ideas and actions would move much more slowly. We cannot take information labor for granted because it is the basis of the world we live in. At present the online market researchers are the key information laborers.

As we have read about Google, the idea of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one that can have a significant impact for marketers. AdWord and AdSense are the important ones.

Mr. Downey also points out that the 'ongoing arms race' features a constant battle between search engineers and internet marketers. The information labor of online market researchers provide in depth knowledge about the way people are searching for products or services. The major limitation of online search engine is that people often don't look beyond the first page of results. If one searches something on Google, then one expects not to look further beyond the first page for search results. So, in this context the job of online market researchers becomes very important. They have to understand what people are looking for, why are they looking for and where they can find it what they are looking for. Their job is to be invisible while doing it. People don't want to know that their online habits are getting tracked and analyzed as a way of understanding how consumers search for what they want.

The concept of 'Personalization' come into the picture. There are 3 steps of doing it. However, maybe if consumers were aware of the role of online market researchers as information laborers, it would benefit them. For example, if companies knew consumers were not willing to pay a high price for a product based on internet tracking and data from online market researchers, they would be more likely to alter their prices based on these trends, because otherwise, it would be less likely people would buy their products or services.

Consumers could have much more control of where, when and for how much they can get, what they want. Whether that is good or bad probably depends on whom you ask. Yet, online market researchers provide vital information. No longer are the days of surveys and phone call data are popular. With every online search, marketers are finding out more about how to serve the consumers needs' in the best possible way by maximizing their potential.

Impact of Google on Internet

Analysis of impact of Google on Internet

Primary Source: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books/magazine/91916/google-schmidt-obama-gates-technocrats

Secondary Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html and Class discussions

Eli Pariser in one of the TED videos extensively talks about how Google as a search engine controls the flow of information in the society. He started of with a quote by Mark Zuckerberg which is as follows:

"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa."

Internet is one of the mediums through which one is connected within a matter of time to the rest of the world. It is great for democracy and society as people can easily share their voices, opinions, concerns and more. Internet helps in shaping up a society through the dissemination of information across the mass. Here, mass is defined as the users who has the access to internet.

The presenter raises an argument by saying there is no standard Google anymore. The reason is as follows:

He asks two of his friends to find some data related to Egypt. When Scott and Daniel, his friends both searches for Egypt from two different places, they get different piece of information on Google about Egypt. On one hand, Scott finds information and news related to the protests which for a long time are very much prevalent in Egypt. On the other hand, Daniel doesn't get any sort of information related to protests in Egypt.

This is what has lead to coin a new term in the age of information which is 'Personalization of news'. All the leading online newspapers and online search engines other than Google also work in the same mechanism. Search engines like Yahoo, newspapers like 'Huffington Post' and 'The New York Times' are some of the examples.

At present, the internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.

On that note, once Eric Shmidt of Google quoted "It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them."

In the past there used to be human gatekeepers who used to control the flow of information, however at present there are algorithmic personalized filters which have taken over the traditional gatekeepers. These algorithmic personalized filters work on the mechanism of 'what one clicks first?'. These filters are devoid of the embedded ethics which human beings have.

There are two different set of groups who have two different beliefs about Google. They are known as:

1. Cyber Optimists
2. Cyber Pessimists

Cyber Optimists

The optimists remember the age before Google as a chaotic, inefficient and disorganized. Most search engines before the advent of Google had poor ethics and had bad search algorithms.  However, when Google was invented it lead to a well organized, ethical and advertisement free world of search engine.

Cyber Pessimists

Cyber Pessimists have different interpretation about Google. They complain that Google has destroyed the adventure of unexpected web browsing. Search results have become very definite and the information is more of a junk.

However, both the parties agree with the point that Google is a unique enterprise that stands apart from the crowd.

There is another argument "Is Google's Exceptionalism genuine?" Google as an ethical organization by not pushing its users through unwanted consumption of advertisement has taken a lead among its other counterparts. Google's ideology of being unique in the field of information dissemination through Google Scholar, Google Dictionary, Google Translator, Google Map, Google Blogspot and more which makes Google's exceptionalism genuine

Philosophy of Google

10 things we know to be true

Primary Source: http://www.google.co.in/about/company/philosophy/ and other websites.
Secondary Source: Class Notes

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Since the advent of Google, it has always been focused on providing the best user experience. Google's homepage is simple and it loads instantly. The advertising in Google page is relevant to the information being searched by a specific user and it doesn't distract the user. The best way to learn how Google search works is by following the steps mentioned below:

The concept of using the tab 'I'm feeling lucky'.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search

• Google's homepage has a button called "I'm feeling lucky". When an user types in a search, e.g. Christ University and then clicks on the button called "I'm feeling lucky", it will take the user to the first search result, here in case it would be the home page of Christ University.
• The tab "I'm feeling lucky" was introduced to get the perfect match for a specific search sidestepping the other search results.
• However, with the introduction of Google Instant it is not possible to use the "I'm feeling lucky" button properly until and unless the Google Instant function is switched off by going to Google Settings.
• Google Instant vs. I'm feeling lucky - If the Google Instant is activated, then the user will get more search results as it is a search enhancement that shows results as one types. Whereas, through "I'm feeling lucky" the user will be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page.

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

Google search engine is best in the world because it has the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems. Their constant attempt to improve the search technology has enriched the users with a new level of experience which is awesome! Over a period of time the Google engineers has worked extensively to develop various functions associated with the 'Search' criteria which has helped in bringing out the best results through the search engine.

Other than the search engine, there are many other applications which Google has launched over the last one decade which changed the information industry. An user doesn't need either a dictionary or a translator or a book to gain his/her knowledge, rather he/she can easily gratify the needs by exploring through Google Dictionary, Google Translator, Google Scholar and more.

To give a best user experience, Google has always concentrated on the placement of advertisements which most of the times affect the user and deviates the minds of the user. Google home page doesn't have any advertisement which helps the user to concentrate on his/her search.

3. Fast is better than slow.

Google's philosophies and thought processes has always been out of the box. It is one of those rare websites on internet which says their goal is to have leave people their website as quick as possible.
As an user's time is valuable, Google puts all its focus on that criteria by making it sure that one's search on the web is found right away! The technology behind the super fast engine is simple as Google promises that through cutting off bits and bytes from their homepage  and by improving the efficiency of their server has improved their average response time of a search result to fraction of a second. The experience of an user while accessing a Google homepage is always great as it works fast irrespective of any type of internet connection.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Google search engine works on the ideology of value of content on other websites. Google's technology assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques. One of the best and popular techniques which they use is called as Page Rank algorithm, which a patent algorithm named after Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google.
This Page Rank algorithm assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set (source: Wikipedia.org).
Democracy on the web is more justified when one can find that Google is also very active in open source software development. The open source software development is one platform where many programmers across the globe gets an opportunity to bring innovation through their collective efforts in programming.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

The present world is pretty much mobile, people can access any source of information from any place across the globe. Google's constant efforts in bringing technological innovations has offered new solutions for mobile services. These newer mobile services help people to access multiple tasks at a given moment. These new services range from checking email to watch videos, access different web application based software, access Google search engine in different ways and formats and more. The mobile operating system Android is one of the leading mobile phone operating systems which has given the user a different experience of accessing internet, which gives more choices, openness and newer experiences.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is one of the leading search engine providers on internet, it is a business and to run a business one always needs revenue. However, there are two ways to earn a revenue, one way is either by following the path of evil by doing something unethical and the other ways is by following the paths of ethics. Google has always been the front-runner of earning its revenues through following the path of ethics.
Google earns it's revenues from offering search technology to companies. It has also another way generating money and that is through advertisement displayed on their website.

AdWords and AdSense

http://www.google.com/adwords/how-it-works/target-your-ads.html?clickid=awtest_control&__utma=173272373.133310759.1378024674.1378024674.1378024674.1&__utmb=173272373.12.9.1378024833590&__utmc=173272373&__utmx=-&__utmz=173272373.1378024674.1.1.utmcsr=%28direct%29|utmccn=%28direct%29|utmcmd=%28none%29&__utmv=-&__utmk=111517124

The advertisers across the globe use AdWords to promote their products and many publishers take the help of AdSense programs to deliver ads relevant to their sites. Google AdWords works on the below mentioned concept:

When people search the web, they tend to use specific phrases like "yoga stdio in springfield," rather than general ones like "yoga". So, Google AdWords suggests the advertisers to be specific while using the keywords and also to make the ads meant for targeting an interested group of people.

Below is a screenshot of how Google AdWords work:

Google AdSense gives suggestions to the advertisers how and where they can place their advertisements on the web to gratify the needs of reaching the ads to the maximum number of online users.

7. There’s always more information out there.

Google and the engineers working there always has the tendency to get information that is not accessible to the users easily. Google does it by either integrating new databases into search or by adding the abilities to search news archives, patents, journals, images and books. These all Google can do by acquisitions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google

Some of the major acquisitions done by Google till date are as follows:

Acquisition Date	Company	Business	Country	Price	Used or Integrated with
February 2003	Pyra Labs	Weblog Software	USA		Blogger
April 2003	Applied Semantics	Online Advertising	USA	$102,000,000	AdSense, AdWords
July 7, 2005	Current Communications Group	Broadband Internet Access	USA	$100,000,000	Internet Backbone
August 17, 2005	Android	Mobile Software	USA	$50,000,000	Android
October 9, 2006	YouTube	Video Sharing	USA	$1,650,000,000	YouTube

There are many other important acquisitions done by Google which can be found in the webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Although Google was founded in California, however at present Google's reach is vast and it accesses information across the globe, having offices in more than 60 countries, maintaining more than 180 domains and availability of the interface in more than 130 languages. This helps the people in finding their search results in their own preferred languages and helps in advanced accessibility through the Google search. Google's translation tools help the people to discover various languages which they are not accustomed to either read or write or speak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_domains

For example various Google domains across the globe are:

India - www.google.co.in
United Kingdom - www.google.uk
France - www.google.fr
Germany - www.google.de
Italy - www.google.it

and many more....

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Google believe in the belief that work should be challenging and that challenge should be fun. The belief of having a right working culture to endorse creativity is one of the major aspects of Google's ideologies. It stresses on the team achievement and pride which is based on individual accomplishment and glory. Their idea of having a meeting or following dress codes are very informal in nature. Google has given its employees the liberty to conduct a meeting in gym or to come to the office wearing tshirts and boxers keeping in mind the comfort factor. It believes in creative work and creativity can come out in any form where the employee is feeling comfortable about himself and the surrounding environment.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

The various exemplary philosophies and ideologies which Google believes in followed by trying to imply them is what keeps Google in a different league. The belief of being great at something in the starting point rather than being at the ending point pushes the Google employees to come out with their best creativity which helps the organization to fulfil the dreams of achieving success through innovation.
For example, when one of the Google employees found that the search worked well for properly spelled words, he started to wonder about the way of handling typos. This lead him to create another innovative application known as spell checker.
Google's problem is to find out our answer which we are trying to find out on the web. It gives the user the assurance that the problem is more of Google's problem rather than the user's one.