Googled out, I am!

So much information and so much to think about!! Where to start?

What I find the most interesting about Web searching is how many of us are dependent on the technology, but how few of us really understand how it works. Plus, I don’t think many people stop to consider how much power the major search engine companies have over the dissemination of information and industry. The Pew Internet article about Search Engine Users states this phenomenon best:

“This odd situation, in which a growing population of users relies on technology most of them don’t understand, highlights the responsibility placed on search engine companies. They are businesses, in many cases extremely successful ones – but their effects on society are far more than merely commercial. One unexpected implication of our study is that search engines are attaining the status of other institutions – legal, medical, educational, governmental, journalistic – whose performance the public judges by unusually high standards, because the public is unusually reliant on them for principled performance.”

And, when I first read the conclusion Hellsten, Leydesdorff and Wouters reached during their research on New Media Society 2006, I panicked! They stated:

“We have shown that the search engines AltaVista and Google systematically relocate the time stamps of web documents in their databases from the more distant past into the present and the very recent past. Further, the search engines delete documents from the year to which they were assigned initially. This leads to a loss of information in the historical record on the web as represented in the search engine databases. Finally, information is lost not only in the quantitative sense of documents disappearing from the historical record, but also in the sense of a loss of structure in the semantic networks.”

Huh?! I had to re-read the information three times before I really understood what they meant. Simply stated, the ability to update information instantaneously overwrites previous information, and timestamps appear for the times information is posted. Phew . . . not so dramatic after all. Besides, if I really need information that isn’t current-to-the-minute, all I have to do is check out the Google Scholar search option!

The idea of net-monsters like Googlzon is a little scary . . . but the benefits are also amazing, like the Google Cloud. Google is a think-tank in its own right, and a benefit to technology and society. As long as the net-monsters aren’t doing shading things like stealing their customers’ identities and selling them, I love the innovations.

As for Microsoft and its bid on Yahoo!, I say, “Sweet deal!” Microsoft needs a fresh product. Even though Yahoo! may not have that much going on right now, it’s still so much fresher than Hotmail, or anything else Microsoft is doing. I think it’s a step in the right direction for Microsoft to stay competitive. Besides, I still love my Yahoo!! And my avatar is absolutely adorable. =)

Post script: It took about twice the time for me to find the Google Documentary from a site with a file I could actually watch without buffering issues than the length of the video itself!! I ended up watching it through GameHacked.com.

Post post script: In one of the articles, “Googlemania!,” Edward Tufte is quoted as saying, “My version is exactly what it is now. Google has got it right.” Mr. Tufte’s title alone made me curious enough to hop on Google and research him! After all, you have to admit that “Yale professor of political science, computer science, statistics, and graphic design” is beyond curious!!