Is Google God?

by Admin


22 Aug
 None    Search Engines


by Gord Hotchkiss


by Gord Hotchkiss

Seri­ously, there are “Googlists” behind www.thechurchofgoogle.org who offer incon­tro­vert­ible proof that Google is God:

  • Google is the clos­est thing to an Omni­scient entity in exis­tence, which can be sci­en­tif­i­cally verified
  • Google is every­where at once
  • Google answers prayers
  • Google is poten­tially immortal
  • Google is infinite
  • Google remem­bers all
  • Google can “do no evil”
  • “Google” is searched for more than “God”, “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Bud­dha”, “Chris­tian­ity”, Islam”, “Bud­dhism” and “Judaism” combined!
  • Evi­dence of Google’s exis­tence is abundant.

Com­pelling evi­dence, and if you’ve read the many books on Google, it’s hard not to believe Larry and Sergey have just a touch of a Mes­siah com­plex about them.

But is our faith in Google unshak­able? A lit­tle while back I was talk­ing to Jacque­line Kro­nes, a senior prod­uct man­ager at Bing, who headed up a large-scale ethno­graphic study of search usage. Microsoft has repeated this study every three years, start­ing in 2004 and fol­low­ing up in 2007 and 2010. Over those three stud­ies, Kro­nes found an inter­est­ing shift in atti­tudes towards search in gen­eral, and, by exten­sion, to Google specifically.

“In 2004, peo­ple said that knowl­edge lives with experts and the experts help them make deci­sions. In 2007 peo­ple said that search engines actu­ally had all of the knowl­edge in the world and it was just there for them to go out and pull it out. In 2010 peo­ple told us that they cre­ated their own knowl­edge – that even though the search engine never really had all the knowl­edge in the world, it was linked to information.”

That arc of our col­lec­tive atti­tude adjust­ment towards search becomes inter­est­ing when you apply it to the par­al­lel devel­op­ment of Google’s hubris. In 2004, Google filed for their IPO and were just get­ting used to being the world’s dom­i­nant search engine. The “start up” glow was still very much alive and Google truly believed they could do no wrong.

In 2007 all indi­ca­tions were that Google really could do no wrong. While it wasn’t exactly the same col­le­gial atmos­phere of 2004, Google was rush­ing full speed ahead on mul­ti­ple fronts.  Acqui­si­tions were rack­ing up at an impres­sive rate and it seemed that Google was assem­bling all the needed pieces for total online dom­i­na­tion. In fact, it wasn’t only online that Google wanted to dom­i­nate. It was print, TV, radio, wire­less, power, books, the Earth and space. Cor­po­rate Amer­ica was hold­ing it’s col­lec­tive breath, wait­ing to see which indus­try Google was going to set its atten­tion deficit sites on next.

By 2010, we had learned that Google was all too fal­li­ble, just like the rest of us.  Do you remem­ber Google Cat­a­log, Google Answers, Orkut or Google TV ? Well, with the excep­tion of Google TV, where the wounds are still fresh and largely gouged on the back of Log­itech, not many of us do. Many of the high­fly­ing plans of 2007 had crashed back to earth.  Google retreated back to its core – mak­ing money in search.

If the trends in Krone’s research hold across the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, it appears that while we once wor­shiped Google, we now regard it in a less remark­able light. It’s a search engine – a pretty good search engine – but it’s hardly the answer to our loftier prayers.

I know this sounds sac­ri­le­gious to the ears of a Google-fearing Googlist. But guess when the site was launched? That’s right, 2007. Given the eupho­ria of the time, per­haps you Googlists can be for­given for your blind worship.

If it makes you feel bet­ter, click on the near­est Google ad and make a dona­tion to Google on my behalf.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished in Mediapost’s Search Insider August 11, 2011


Biography / Resume : Gord Hotchkiss is the founder and senior vice president of Enquiro, now part of Mediative. He is renowned in the industry for his expertise when it comes to understanding online user and search behaviour. He and the Enquiro team have built a solid reputation for being the leading experts when it comes to understanding what happens on a search portal and why. Before Enquiro, Gord was chairman and director of SEMPO (The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), he worked as a columnist for MediaPost and Search Engine Land, and he was a regular speaker at industry conferences and events. Gord is also the author of The BuyerSphere Project: How Business Buys from Business in a digital marketplace.






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