imagine there's no google
How would you find information if Google was down for a day? What if it was just gone?
"Google? Gone?" you say, "that's crazy talk, it's impossible!"
But it's not impossible. Google will only retain its market dominance until something better comes along. After that, it will be remembered but never used any more. Just ask Altavista, Lycos, or any other pre-Google search engine.
Now I don't for a moment wish bad things on Google, I just think people should be a little more aware of the fact they use Google without thinking. How else could "Google" become a verb?
Google has achieved ubiquity. Good for them! But is it good for us?
there can be...well lots, actually
Google is a brilliant general search engine, but it's not the only one out there. In fact, brute force searching isn't even the only way to look for information. In some cases, it's probably counter-productive.
Why counter productive? Well for a start people don't search widely. They just hit the first few results on Google and go with the first answer they find. Too bad if it's wrong, or there's relevant information that wasn't obvious from the first page of search results. So many people are getting bad information because they've developed bad search habits. Google's "I feel lucky" button probably didn't help!
You also have to consider that with systems like PageRank you're not necessarily getting accurate information. Millions of people linking to something doesn't mean that it's the best information, it just means it's popular.
You have to ask yourself, do I actually want the masses to filter information for me? What if I'd just prefer to know what my peers think? After all, I know and trust my peers (and their opinion).
trust and information retrieval
You do need to trust the people delivering search results and the people who influence those results. I don't actually know the people at Google so I have no real basis to trust them. I definitely don't know the masses of people whose links are indexed by the Googlebot. So, search in general does not score well on trust - I can only assume I can trust Google, which is a pretty thin level of trust for such a critical tool.
However, I do trust friends and colleagues... and the cool thing is that many of them use social bookmarking systems like del.ico.us and ma.gnolia. So I can actually search the links which they designate "Good Links". I can tap into the tribal hive mind.
besides that...
Besides questions of trust, accuracy or information gatekeeping... I just think people should ask the question: "why do I always use Google?".
I think that people should be reminded to question things, pure and simple. It's probably a hangover from my philosophy degree. Everyone should prove that they don't exist at least once ;)
I'm not saying you can't continue using Google - frankly I know we all will! But we should do so with the awareness that we are trusting a single pathway to information. We are putting all our eggs into the one proverbial basket.
a day without google
So why not try going a whole day without using Google. Where would you start?
- Maybe you know a search engine or two off the top of your head (no Googling for search engines, you at the back). Try Teoma, Ask, etc.
- Maybe you'd hit Technorati and search tagged info.
- Maybe you'd hit a major single resource like Wikipedia.
- Maybe you'd search Technorati and Wikipedia for search engines.
- Maybe you'd hit del.ico.us or ma.gnolia and go the social bookmarks method.
- Maybe you'd hit email, IM or Twitter and ask your friends for recommendations.
- Maybe some people would be really freaky and go to the library. Before the web, there were Libraries; before Google there were librarians...
We don't actually need Google. We're just really used to it. It's good at what it does, but it's not the only one nor is it the only way to access data. Every once in a while, we should try some of the other ways. It's not good to be totally reliant on a single source or pathway to information.
There's every chance that one day, Google will fall. One day, it might not even be there. Stranger things have happened.
Until then, we can gleefully google to our hearts' content... but we shouldn't do it out of ignorance.
Labels: google, information retrieval, pagerank, search, trust
You say you trust your friends and colleagues for links and good information. The information they would recommend as the good sources. Maybe even flag as a leading source for that topic.
Well thats the idea behind Google Coop (as I see it). Get people to tell google what is the leading sources of trusted information on the web. I think you will find over time if Coop works Google will start to leverage this information on trusted sources.
As for no Google for a day, fine I can live with that, I just fall back on other less search engines. But take out Google / Wkipedia / Technorati / and say del.icio.us and I would be lost totally. :)
Also funny but a lot of newbies (outside the technical Industries) I find still use MSN in Australia. Damn preloaded IE default.
ahhh You almost sound like a librarian! :)
Although I may have to send this to a few of my co workers. Not that they use google exclusively, more that people (ie trainees) use google rather than coming to us to get accurate information!
No offense, but this was what smart people were saying five years ago, and they've changed their tune considerably since then. Since then Google has more than made it clear that they intend to diversify beyond search. Look at Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, I could go on and on listing the number of things that are only tangentially related to search.
I don't question everything, but I question how much you know about what you're talking about here.
@gary: There's definitely a small group of services which would leave most of us gasping if they were to disappear. But as you observe though there are plenty of people who just use the default on their computer - makes it clear why default search deals are so highly sought-after.
@davina: I can only imagine what librarians think of the search habits people have developed ;)
@anonymous: I'm talking about search, so the diversifications are irrelevant. Please read the post and use your name next time.
I figure Google is flawed as a search engine anyways, it just happens to be the best flawed search engine out there right now.
There is so much room for improvement which tells me that Google (probably) won't stay the leader forever. Someone will come up with something better.
Google will be around I am sure, but they don't have to dominate search forever.
Also, any change will be slow and transitional. The masses will slowly sway to the better (or packaged) search engine.
I use Twitter :-)
Back in the days when we had to hand-crank our computers it was Altavista (Altavistas all the way down).
At WWW7 a colleague shared a lunch table with two nice guys that had this little startup going.
Oh, for a Wayback Machine!
As for trust:
Remember when M$ was promoting trust? You don't want to get caught doing any "promiscuous surfing" now do you...
@scott: Absolutely! I also remember when Google was an obscure little search engine that only geeks knew about or used.
I'm fascinated to think what the next big thing in search will be. Google changed the rules so massively by indexing relationships as well as the pages themselves. What's the next step? Finding a usable metric for accuracy perhaps?
@nathanael: twitter recommendations can work pretty well. Depends how active and chatty your twitterpack is, though.
@gavin: MS and trust... there's a weird dance.
Not sure how long you've been using the internet but this is the same argument about alta-vista, hotbot and every other great search engine since the beginning of the internet.
People will move on once Google turns irrelevant or something better comes along. Yeah sure we "google" things these days but I use velcro and cellophane rather than "hook and catch fasteners" and "clear plastic wrapping paper". That's just semantics.
I'm not so sure that trusting friends and colleagues and others in the industry is so much better than google - I stopped using techmeme as it's the same old popular crap that you're talking about, and that is supposedly just the geeks...
Realistically we're never going to have a perfect way of searching. Right now Google is a good way but far from perfect. What we have in 5 years will probably be a good search tool but far from perfect.