Google the Amulet
Google, the world’s most popular search engine, became the recipient Wednesday of the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities for 2008.
The jury based its opinion on the argument that “...in barely a decade Google has produced a gigantic cultural revolution and has assisted in providing general access to knowledge. Google thus contributes decisively to people’s progress, beyond ideological, economic, language or racial barriers.”
Journalist Rosa Montero, a member of the jury, defined Google as “an authentic wonder.” Such was the ambience of praise that prevailed in Spain, except for a few observations here and there pointing to little facts ignored amid so much celebration.
The digital emporium—which has nothing to do with the modest venture founded a decade ago by Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page—gets more than 200 million search requests a day from its one billion registered users, and boasts some 8.2 billion indexed pages.
Considered one of the most profitable companies in the world, Google is currently valued at 66 billion dollars. In 2006, it bought the video hosting site YouTube and a year later the on-line publicity enterprise Double Click, for which it paid huge sums.
There is absolutely no doubt that Google, which in 2007 netted in some 16.6 billion in publicity alone, is a planetary giant, as there is no doubt that it is a most effective information organizing and accessing tool for Internet users.
Yet, the jury lied straightfaced when it stated in its ruling that Google operated “beyond ideological barriers.” That is definitely not Google, which is as effective a search engine as it is selective in its scanning of available knowledge and information, doing so through the ideological prism of present day capitalism.
Google is a corporation, a private entity, but you don’t need to take a crash course in contemporary political economy to identify its close link with the US power elites.
For a long time Google has been shaping the world for us as it wants us to see it, based on patterns that support the geopolitical concept of domination. That explains the reference in Spain yesterday about a “Googlelization” of reality.
Professor Silvio Mieli of Sao Paulo University wrote about this on the Rebelion web site. He referred to a study by the Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media of the Graz University of Technology in Austria titled “Report on dangers and opportunities posed by large search engines, particularly Google.”
The study concludes that anyone who analyzes the issue realizes that Google has amassed so much power that it represents a threat for society, because it has become the main interface between reality and the Internet researcher.
The text points to the fact that, without limitations of any kind, Google gathers information about people more than any other institution, thus “turning it into the largest detective agency in the planet.”
It has a direct influence on the economy, especially with regards to how advertisements are displayed—how much you pay, the greater the visibility of your ad. In addition, part of its multi-million dollar deals involve an on-line publicity strategy based on sponsored links.
Mieli also notes that the study revealed that Google exhibits a monopolistic behavior and has resulted in what researchers call “the Google cut and paste syndrome.”
We are faced, Meili explains, with the emergence of a generation of “researchers” who simply put together a blanket of information patches obtained through Google and disguise that as school or college papers, without even quoting sources.
At the same time, anyone using Google finds that at times all that is found are references and shallow information marked by a first world outlook.
Google, and Internet as a whole, become useful when the surfer is sufficiently aware both politically and culturally and is able to discern the wheat from the chaff. It is important to know the secrets and the truth behind this new luck “amulet.”
