Growing up on Google

I’ve played pacman on the header and I look forward to each and every April 1st. My gmail account came from an invitation, and when I was in college and had to present two different ‘free’ web tools, I showed everyone imdb.com as my database and… oh, yeah, Google.

We called it a ‘meta search engine’ at the time, and no one knew who was going to win the race — would it be Mamma, the mother of all search engines? (http://www.mamma.com/) Or would ‘normal’ search engines win out with their superior algorithms — at that time, everyone wanted to cuddle up to AltaVista. (http://www.altavista.com/)

Well, no one ‘mammas’ themselves to see what’s out there on the web about them, and AltaVista was purchased by Yahoo some time ago. It’s all about Google.

But how can Google keep from becoming future roadkill on the information superhighway?

Many of the tools that they have developed and continue to refine have helped to ensure their future success. Gmail turned email into an interactive experience, with a built-in chat feature, a special system of linking threads of the same emails together, and most recently introducing Buzz as an additional social networking aspect. The list of tools is exhaustive — but, is too much Google too much of a good thing?

From the perspective of a librarian, I am optimistically cautious of the information collection done by Google. As someone trained to keep people’s information needs private, I feel a certain degree of insecurity knowing just how much information is collected. Search terms are analyzed, as are the subjects of emails — ever wonder how it is that the ads displayed sometimes seem to be the exact things you’d be interested in? But can Google really be faulted for it — in order to provide the fantastic services that they do, free of charge, there needs to be something given in exchange.