Posts Tagged ‘siva’

I’m a huge fan of Google. I advocate for many of their products and have converted many friends to GMail (the most recent declared her soulmate status with the web mail service only 1 day after leaving Apple Mail). But for every new user, the power that Google wields increases. An increasing number of critics are surfacing and calling for regulatory oversight (see the proposal for a Federal Search Commission), user-based push back (see TrackMeNot) or even writing a whole book about their worries (see Siva’s Googlization of Everything). Many of these concerns were outlined in a recent article by the Boston Globe about the opponents of Google.

For a number of reasons I don’t have the desire to outline, I think many of these concerns are overstated and the proposed solutions are misplaced, but it is worthwhile to have people question such an important institution in today’s world. The one concern I have about Google isn’t really a problem from their end, but really a result of a market-based decision by users to search with the familiar company. Google’s share of searches tops 60% and, in turn, they shape the public perception of truth and knowledge. I was reminded just how potent they were by a recent blog post about the design choices they make on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Decisions as apparently minor as typography, spacing and color have profound effects on the results searchers click on. In turn, people experience different information than otherwise.

Because users are choosing this, and because Google has an interest in providing the best results, and because I’m not convinced this is worse than in the past, I’m not overly concerned about their power. But it is important to bear in mind the effects of search engines in today’s world.