Google’s recent tenth birthday has left me (and pretty much everyone with an opinion on search) pondering the extent of its power. In its short commercial life the engine has changed from quirky student project to a multi-billion pound business. It has spawned language developments, helped create the sector in which I work and inserted fingers into a startling number of pies – admittedly never quite replicating the success of its search facility.
So just how much power has it drawn to itself? Some people now access the web through their Google browser and check their GoogleMail before catching up with friends on GoogleTalk and maybe browsing YouTube (a Google property). The majority of web users in Britain frequently use the search engine to navigate the web, according to several studies.
If the internet is an extension of the world, Google is one of the top demigods. It can even punish sinners, throwing websites out of the top results if firms transgress its definition of acceptable search engine optimisation.
Many of us rely hugely on Google, to the exclusion of other, similar services. If I want to read a newspaper I don’t buy one, I visit Google News. If it were to suddenly prioritise right-wing news over the left, many people would fail to notice, at least for a while. Certainly a large number of my friends who give no thought the how exactly it picks the results it presents would probably not notice a political slant to the information they were presented with.
Now Google is putting 200 years-worth of newspapers online – a fantastic development which will fascinate people and facilitate research. This can only help further knowledge and yet it is one more tool we are likely to start relying on and which Google will control.
These thoughts are not unique and I am certainly not the first commentator to address them. I am also not proposing we do anything about it – the only thing more worrying to me than a commercial entity with all this power is a specific government in charge.
Google has not really abused its power so far. However, it is now a long way from the young firm sticking it to Microsoft. Don’t be evil, Google, you are much too big.
It is certainly too much power in the hands of a private company. They haven’t abused it yet but nobody knows the future…
wow…200 years of newspaper online, amazing. Google is providing many tools for every day life use and it is helping many people all over the world, but there will a point when it will be too much…Who ever has the knowledge…has the power and control.
Its good that Google provides us with so much information, but its really too much power for a single company.
As the saying goes knowledge is power and power corrupts. Even with a Dont be evil mission, can Google really resist the evils of power, especially being listed?
Only time will tell…
If Google isn’t a monopoly then I don’t know what is! Microsoft was punished for dodgy tactics so surely Google needs some form of regulation?
Monopoly: exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.
I agree that there is an aweful lot of power i ntheir hands…and whenever they talk about the “future of search”, it always gets a bit creepy in their lack of respect in terms of privacy.
For example here’s some exerpts from their “future of search” post:
http://footinmouthdisease.net/2008/09/10/google-buddy-the-future-of-search
“W]hat’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know.”
…
Ok…that’s not creepy???