All hail Google

After discussing the role of the search engine with my university class I was very interested when I came across one of Paul Sheehan’s articles in The Sydney Morning Herald last week. The title, ‘In Google we trust: our new faith.’ Sheehan puts forward the argument that Google is equivalent to God. Here is an exert from the article:

“The Church of Google offers what it calls nine proofs:
1. Google is the closest thing to an omniscient entity in existence.
2. Google is everywhere at once (omnipresent).
3. Google answers prayers.
4. Google is potentially immortal.
5. Google is infinite (The internet can theoretically grow forever).
6. Google remembers all.
7. Google can do no evil.
8. Google is believed (The term “Google” is searched for more than the terms “God”, “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Buddha”, “Christianity” and “Islam” combined).
9. Evidence of Google’s faith is abundant.”

While this is theoretically true the impact Google and other search engines have had on societies is huge. As Sheehan writes, “You can’t find collective wisdom via compromise. The best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.” Google harnesses this idea of crowd knowledge and will this year process more than 180 billion requests for knowledge.
The search engine has changed the face of journalism, yet there is debate over whether this change has been a positive or a negative one. In one sense information is easier to find, contacts easier to get and stories easier to find. On the other hand it could be said that journalists to easily rely on information. For example the Jeff Goldblum story below which turned out to be very, very wrong.



From a different point of view search engines, if optimised, allow news sites to gain greater readership. Gina Chen a journalist and blogger writes, “One of your goals as a journalistic blogger is that people will find your post on a given topic. So when they type a search into Google, you want your blog to be among the first few sites that come up. (The first few sites are the ones that most people will go to.)” Search engines allow journalists to direct traffic in a way that they previously had no control over. If you would like to know how to use search engine optimisation visit http://savethemedia.com/2008/12/30/a-journalists-guide-to-search-engine-optimization/
But if Google is God, does that make journalists prophets?