Google and Me

Google is the second most popular site that people visit on the internet (the first being facebook). With its search engine, Google has indexed a little less than 40% of the world wide web--and has become the most popular search engine for the web, which begs the question, are people narrowing their experience of the internet to Google?

I'll admit that "google" common websites--such as my email, college, facebook--rather than typing out the url. I also use Google to search for topics I am interested in, but know very little about. "Googling" a subject typically takes less time, especially if you aren't quite sure of the exact address of an informative website on the subject.

But by constantly turning to Google for searches, am I limiting myself to viewing the internet through "Google's eyes," and am subsequently handicapping myself by referring only to information that appeared as part of Google's result list (which ignores certain de-listed* websites and websites that seek to avoid indexing and high traffic)?

[*De-listed websites are not necessarily illegal websites, but merely sites that Google has de-listed because the authors attempted to manipulated Google's page ranking system.]

I am not here to ridicule Google's website (in fact, it is the first site I turn to for image searches, webmail, directions, and other random searches), however, I would like to pause and consider for a moment what sort of effect Google is having on internet culture.

Google, through its indexing and other facets of search capabilities, largely seems to own the internet. It owns Youtube.com, the popular video site, as well as Blogger (the program I am using right now).

Right now, it might make sense for one single company to index the entire internet--but I think that sometime in the future, perhaps if Google ever starts charging for its services, we will wish that we had created a more competitive search engine system.

To answer my own question, yes, I do think that right now people are too dependent on Google as their "sole source" of information.

It's perfectly ok to "Google" information every once in a while--but I guess my closing question is: whatever happened to encyclopedias--even online encyclopedias?

Cheers!