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