The Importance of Being Google

New English Review ^ | September 2009 | G. Kim Blank

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

Caught in headlights of the present, it may be difficult to imagine that there was a time before poststructuralism, postmodernism and—heaven help us—postcoloniality. And a time before we uttered with utter banality, “Google it.”

How easefully we have come to embrace that seemingly innocuous, pixilated portal to all things arcane and ordinary. Google killed the encyclopedia business and probably wounded the reference librarian; and, as it raised its ambitions, it has certainly bruised the book industry and busied its copyright lawyers. It may also have changed not just how we find things, but how we know them.

Google’s search engine was something impossible that we seemed, nonetheless, to be waiting for, as if it were our pod-given right. And now? It’s just always there—like the air. Well, air composed of infinite ones and zeroes, air that you capture and turn into copy-and-paste information almost as fast as your hands can type and your cursor can click and drag. That a “googol” is, as a mathematical term, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, makes the point: it’s a number impossible to imagine, like the power of the search engine that, only ten years ago, had its creators ingeniously misspell the term and go on to emphatically win and continue to dominate the lucrative search engine war.

[TexGuy]

“Yeah! I duzzn’t haff to go da skool or no nuttin’. I jus gotts to Google me sum info!”

[KarlInOhio]

Google’s search engine was something impossible that we seemed, nonetheless, to be waiting for, as if it were our pod-given right.

There were search engines before Google. I remember when Ask Jeeves was a big deal because you could type in natural language questions.

[ecomcon]

I do quite a lot of vehicular, mechanical, electrical and technically related searches, and I’ve noticed that within the last year or two, the results have become less and less relevant.

Much green technology related pdf papers from universities, opinion articles, stupid patents, just more and more social engineering junk.

[Incorrigible]

FReepers don’t let FReepers use BIG LIB supporting Google.

http://www.Bing.com

[Oberon]

I've started using Bing as my default search engine. And coming from a dedicated Microsoft-despiser like me, that's saying something.

I just got tired of Google owning so much of the market, and being anti-gun to boot.

[DDLL]

There IS life outside of Google. I refuse to use Google.

[KarlInOhio]

There are many reasons to like Google over other search engines. The first and most important to me is the simple, relatively low bandwidth page. I don't have to dig through a couple megabytes worth of flash advertisements to find out the chemical formula for pentacene is. Not having to worry about Flash or advertising blockers is nice.

However for more technical information like that I'm more and more likely to either go directly to Wikipedia or use Wikipedia as one of my Google search terms to get the Wiki entry at the top. (Yes, yes, I know, Beeeeewaaaaaare of Wikipedia. I still think it is more likely to be accurate than any other random page on the Internet if it hasn't been recently vandalized.)

[ecomcon]

I use them all, and I don’t see much differance. It’s like they’re all emulating Google.

[ecomcon]

It’s true. I find wikipedia to be mostly useful.

[Rashputin]

" ... within the last year or two, the results have become less and less relevant."

Any group that goes along with censorship of the Internet in China and donates massive amounts to liberal causes can't really be trusted to not bias searches it feels are related to causes it supports. Google doesn't seem to be all that concerned about useful results from your perspective, they're interested in useful results from their own perspective. They are anything but a neutral provider.

It's interesting you mention vehicle information, it was looking for that sort of thing that got me off of google about two years ago. I really didn't want to know how a 351W compared to a four banger in it's impact on the environment, but that was about what the first three pages returned had. Back then I used Yahoo which even on first try returned a better mix of information. I used Dogpile a lot for some things, Yahoo for technical things, and of late I'm using Bing and like what I've gotten so far.

Regards

[Oberon]

Yeah, but it makes a difference to me who gets the hits.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

to find out the chemical formula for pentacene

You mean you don't already know that? Sheesh, I thought everybody knew that! It's (CeNe)₅!

[bIlluminati]

Bing is great. I just typed in “january suborbital denomination” and the right thing came up first.

[JimSEA]

Interesting article. One question that concerns me is that use of the repository of knowledge presupposes some basic education, reading with a starter vocabulary, math and most fundamentally, curiosity. What happens when large portions of the population lack the interest or ability to use the Internet beyond facebooking, youtubing and porn surfing? Doesn't this inevitably both endanger the maintenance of the web and result in a huge social gap? We will end up with Slacker and Hip Hop vs. superficial and easily manipulated dabblers vs. a tiny productive group. You know, a society kind of like we have today and which resulted in Obama’s election.

[ecomcon]

I really didn't want to know how a 351W compared to a four banger in it's impact on the environment, but that was about what the first three pages returned had.

That's exactly what I see. Many times I have to go several pages in to find something relevant, if there is in fact anything relevant.

[bert]

Try Bing. I’ve been there for about a week now

It seems to be ok and has a cleaner, less cluttered feel.