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"Do you google?"
03/21/2004 Entry
[This appeared on Crooked Timber on Mar 4, '04 . See follow-up comments there.]
It seems “googling” is now used by many as a synonym for online searches just like kleenex is used to refer to a tissue or xeroxing to using a copier. I have yet to see empirical evidence that suggests Google is used by the majority of Internet users, yet many people talk about it as though it was the only existing search engine. References to Google as the be-all and end-all of search engines abound at least among journalists and academics, and perhaps it is not surprising that such people know about and use Google. But not everybody does although you’d be hard-pressed to know that judging from the rhetoric.
I have a small piece in this month’s First Monday in which I discuss this issue and why it is problematic to assume everyone uses a certain service when that is not necessarily the case.
Actually, I only mention one concern in that piece. Another that I do not bring up there but have alluded to elsewhere is that it is problematic to have so much riding on a proprietary service. We do not know where it is headed and since the details of its algorithm for displaying results are not transparent to the public we should not depend on it to guarantee equal access to all types of information indefinitely.
Replies: 2 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
Got here via the BBC
You are right about google use. My kids are hopeless and they wont listen to good searching advice from me
Posted by Andy Nathan @ 04/06/2004 04:23 AM CST
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3601371.stm
Posted by Trevor Kelleher @ 04/07/2004 01:21 AM CST
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