’Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.’
- George Orwell
Most internet users depend on — and love — Google, the search engine with a sense of humour. Who else but Google would have cartoon athletes jumping through their ‘hoops’ on the product banner during the Commonwealth Games. However, dependency and trust are different things and the implications for privacy in an online world are grave, and some are starting to feel uncomfortable about the power Google has over their lives. As a result Google is at the centre of a debate about the power of technology and the responsibility this brings with it.
It might help to look back at the development of search engines. When people first started using the internet, the choice of search engines available was broad and people’s choices were largely idiosyncratic. In 2007, the equation is somewhat different. Other search engines are available but Google is pre-eminent.
Since its incorporation in September 1998 Google has grown at a staggering rate.
Hitwise statistics show that Google had 64 per cent of the search market in March 2007. Month-on-month, and year-on-year, the company is increasing its market share at the expense of every other search engine.
The growth of Google has mirrored the growth of Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s to some extent. Microsoft has for years been seen as the "evil empire" because of its size and reach. While a consenus on whether Google is handling its burgeoning power has not been reached yet — but dark grumblings are beginning to emerge from civil liberties groups.
Google’s corporate motto is 'Don’t be evil'.
At first glance, the company seems impossibly benign. It has introduced a range of products and services that have quickly been taken up by users. Google desktop, Documents and Spreadsheets, Videos, and now YouTube, Earth, Maps, Gmail, News, Scholar, Translate, Book Search, Blogger, Picasa and GTalk are just some of the products free for anyone to use.
This munificence seems decidedly "un-evil", and stands in stark contrast to Microsoft’s "user pays" model. Free products might mask the fact that as Google has grown, but it is a fact that choice for users has shrunk.
Google derives its primary income from text advertising, a field that it dominates. These ads populate millions of websites. In April 2007, Google purchased Double Click, one of the leading display (pictures, as opposed to