Google has our best interests in mind

Thanksgiving is coming soon and my job is to think of some new recipes for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted to make a bundt cake and not having a recipe book so I had to find one somewhere. So what did I do? I Googled it. Although Google is just a search engine, it has become so efficient at what it does that we have begun to use its very name as a verb. So I type in the name “ bundt cake,” and a list of websites with various bundt cake recipes. There was much more than I could find in a recipe book. I find an Amaretto Bundt cake recipe and I am on my way

Google has created the ultimate search engine. Many people are dependent on it for all information. I probably use Google 10 to 20 times a day just to get information about the world. Anything I need to know the answer is there. Yet you wonder where Google makes their money. The same way most companies do, through advertising. However, many might ask where are the ads? There are no bright pop ups, No dancing people on the side saying they got a free credit report, no flashing banner advertising a free laptop. Instead there is a small column on the right site of the page with advertisements for companies that offer products or services related to your search. Often times those ads can be just as important to your search as the websites that initially come up.

When searching for my bundt cake recipe ads come up for bundt cake pans from HSN, or bundt cake mixes from Target; all things I could use to help me make a cake. Google has even started advertising like this in their email program. When I open an email Google uses key words to link ads to. An email about student government will bring up government ads and student government help sites. Googles ads have turned out to be more helpful than an annoyance.

It is in Google’s list of ten things they know to be true where one can find their philosophy on advertising. Number six of their ten things is a statement that I think evokes the very virtue of Google, “You can make money without doing evil.” With this very statement we can see the goal of Google. They want to produce advertising that is not intrusive. They accomplish it effectively and in the process persuade us to purchase things that are beneficial to our lives at the time. I think that is the way that advertising should be. It should not blast things in our faces that are irrelevant to what we are doing at the time. Advertising should capitalize on what we as consumers are actually looking for and I think that Google has accomplished that aim.

Google has it right

Google's massive success speaks of the applicability of its mission statements to the required demands. Several aspects of their top 10 list, although they are primarily applicable for a search engine company, strike me as critical for companies in general to target for our current, dynamic culture.

It's best to do one thing really, really well.
This hits home for me in relation to sports. Sure, natural athleticism allows one to learn multiple sports as effectively than the average kid trying to learn one, because of the high level of competition outside of that particular region, he or she must completely devote their time and effort to one focus. Extending this analogy to the corporate world, companies these days must acknowledge the increased number of producers and must really concentrate all resources to hone in on one aspect that sets their company apart.

Fast is better than slow.
Long ago, quality was better than quantity. Now it is the other way around. The cause, I believe, is emphasis on time efficient rather than the society turning more materialistic and wanting more things. Fast foods strive and cheap mass production trumps quality products on a lesser scale primarily because people are now willing to sacrifice quality to save time. Hence, fast is better than slow. As bad as it sounds, the larger corporations should probably prioritize time efficiency for the consumer even more at the cost of other things.

There's always more information out there.
Research, survey, do polls. Whatever you can do to keep up with the needs and wants of the dynamic target audience. I don't think you can count on loyalty as much anymore. This ties in with: Great just isn't good enough. Your company has to be dynamic as well (or at least in how you present it).

I have intentionally left out the statements that make Google sound very moral and upright because, frankly, I don't think that is what made Google successful. They probably just included them in there to make themselves look good. However, the above-mentioned statements are very relevant to the trend of consumerism these days. I'm not sure whether Google and companies like it are influencing this trend or whether they are merely catering correctly to it, but obviously it's working, and other companies will probably assimilate Google's direction.

Google: A Model for the Future?

If someone (other than a math major) today read the word “googol” in a paper or on a sign, they would most likely shrug their shoulders and laugh at the uninformed person who misspelled Google, the wellspring of information portals. Yet the Google enterprise based its name off of that word; a mathematical term for 1100. Now the word Google has morphed into a proper noun, a word that spell check capitalizes; the word brings up images of a white screen with the blue, red, green and yellow letters informing one that he or she has arrived at the fountainhead of search portal destination.
Google’s mission is a unique one: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/). From their foundation till today, their focus hasn’t changed; Google is still dedicated to their users. Google has set up Google Chrome to make searching ever simpler and Google Books, in order to digitize information that is not yet available on the web. Google is doing all it can think of to make its search engine faster, simpler, and more effective to its users.
Google is also unique in its advertising technique: Google set up its site so that advertisers bid for their ads to be attached to certain keywords in an open auction, thus making the ads on Google pertinent to the individual’s searches. Google has also opted to separate their search results from the ads of sponsoring companies by putting the two categories under separate headings – making it easier to find what one is looking for directly without having to sift through a myriad of ads.
Not only does Google make searching simple, it also aids in social networking and long distance communication/cooperation. Gmail and Google Docs are set up to benefit collaboration between people in various geographical areas by allowing everyone in a certain group to work on the same set of data via these Google applications. Google is dedicated to be the most user-friendly, fast, and most available information portal that it can be – in fact, one of Google’s “Ten Things” is “it’s best to do one thing really, really well”, which is reflected in their success as a search engine.
Google believes that “you can make money without doing evil” and that “democracy on the web works” – Google strives to develop and improve its site in all aspects without doing injury to its users or compromising its mission statement (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html). Google’s new outlook of businesses attempting to cater to individuals’ needs and attempting to aid the customer to the greatest extent possible is becoming the goal of a growing number of companies.
This may change consumerism and the economy in the next ten years from one of attempting to get the consumer to need or want the product a company is selling to attempting to make a product that a consumer wants or needs. Companies may shift their focus towards making products geared toward individual interests and needs – custom-made products may become the common commodity. One never knows what the future may bring, but Google seems to be paving the way towards a more client friendly version of economics and consumerism.

What Will Google Do?

According to Jeff Jarvis, Google is the new Jesus. The iconic company is the guiding light for all the other businesses wandering in the darkness and confusion of the internet age. By applying Google's principles to a company's life, any CEO can redeem the bottom line. Jarvis claims Google's success stems from the company's total embrace of the fundamental changes caused by our newly networked society.

For its part, Google does not claim to be divine (at least not obviously). According to its website, Google's mission is: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Obviously, such a task will never be complete, but Google has made significant progress toward accomplishing that goal. Perhaps the only "company" who can rival Google's efforts is Wikipedia. But what would happen if Google did complete its mission and made every single bit (and byte, page, word, idea, thought, picture, etc.) of the world's information quickly and easily accessible to anyone within the next ten years? I believe the world would be a different (and not necessarily better) place.

One current example that is likely to continue is how the easy access of simple information is likely to change education. The presence of Wikipedia and Google, two websites that provide a plethora of well-organized information, has led to new distinctions in information: information that can be obtained quicker from memory and knowledge that can be found faster online. Interestingly, such division are based on the increased value of time expressed in one of Google's "Ten Things" as "Fast is better than slow".

Such externalizing of information is not surprising considering the phenomenal increase in knowledge humanity has achieved in the modern era. Yet, the consequences of a well-organized "collective intelligence" have yet to be realized. With the creation of writing, humanity was able to build off the discoveries of others. This is the basis for our current education system: certain information is required to productively function in society and that information is what schools exist to impart on anyone who desires to know. (The efficiency and efficacy with which this information is passed is debatable, but the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next seems to be the core reason education as we know it exists.)

Yet, if the trend towards a separation of information based on efficiency of retrieval (memory vs. megabytes) continues into the future, the very purpose of education is likely to change. Education will still need to provide a certain knowledge base (of some size which many will likely argue about), but it will also need to equip students with the tool necessary to survive a world of information overload. Accurate evaluation of the relevance, authority, and authenticity of information will be even more important in ten years than it is today. Such critical thinking skills are what will help people succeed, even just survive, in both the work world and society as a whole.

In the end, Google's philosophy combined with the spread of the internet is sure to continue changing society in new and unexpected ways. Changing the nature of knowledge and education is only one part of Google transformative force. From the aggressive openness and transparency seen in Google's Android phone and Google Voice service to the unexpected new services Google and the internet as a whole is likely to provide, the world will never be the same. If nothing else, the mindset of freely accessible services and information (almost communist in nature) that the internet embodies and Google provides will affect humanity's worldview into the foreseeable future.

(Longer Essay #2)

Google!

As a preface of sorts, I decided to limit my research to official Google websites, so my information could be biased. However, I think that Google isn't evil yet, so it is probably fairly accurate.

One large facet of Google seems to be advertising. Google's primary source of income, it would seem, is from their advertising. Yet the ads remain unobtrusive and clearly designated. They use technology to give each user very relevant ads. I particularly enjoy the ads that come up in gmail. It always makes sense that I would see those ads, even if that isn't really what I was looking for. It seems to me that if Google continues with it's smart advertising, pretty soon people won't ever have to go to stores to buy things. Whatever I want, even if I only hint at it, is presented in an ad in my email or on a search page. I won't have to look for things to buy, they will come to me. This makes shopping somewhat more convenient, particularly because there isn't as much hunting around to find what is really important. Of course, people might start spending a lot more money on things that they don't really need because the suggestions will be for things that they hadn't thought to buy previously.

Google's published philosophy includes a list of "Ten Things" with short descriptions. The first one is to focus on the user, first and foremost. It's nice to know that they are trying to make a product that will work as well as possible for me instead of just trying to make money at my expense. This likely serves to balance the great focus on advertising and will likely keep people more loyal because they will not be bombarded with advertisements instead of useful content. If Google suddenly started advertising like lots of other websites with ridiculous and irrelevant large distracting banner ads people would probably stop using it as much and would probably not use the ads to find useful items. This would mean consumerism wouldn't change much in the next 10 years due to Google.

Numbers two and three on the list of Ten Things basically amount to making sure that what Google started out as, a search engine, will work a well as possible. They will focus on making sure that search works well and quickly. With such a powerful tool for browsing such vast amounts of information as are available on the internet, people will most likely find new hobbies and items to buy, even without relevant ad placement. In the past, one might need to go to a store to find out about all the latest camping equipment or knitting paraphernalia, but now they can sit at home or in an office and browse things from all over the world. I'm sure people buy things that they otherwise wouldn't because they find it online, and this trend will probably increase with time as searches get more efficient and people get more used to shopping from their desk. Another aid to shopping is Thing number five, which emphasizes accessing Google from anywhere. Stuck on a train going across the country? You could shop online! Sitting in a boring meeting or lecture? You could buy plane tickets to a much more exciting place! You could do comparison shopping right from the aisle of your local store. Sure, lots of information is out there, but a lot of it just might affect consumer habits. Instant gratification is getting to be the norm, instead of the luxury.

Thing six is the every-popular "do no evil", though it is phrased a bit differently. Google states that "you can make money without doing evil". This is why they don't bombard people with ads, even though that is how they make money. Google works hard to build the trust of users. Breaking that trust at this point would be disastrous. People don't expect to be able to trust other companies, but Google has the power and the information to become very evil, so people need to know that Google can indeed be trusted. If people lost their trust in Google, Google wouldn't be able to change consumer habits in the nest 10 years, and the answer to the nebulous question posed for this blog assignment would be "N/A".

Another factor that might affect consumers is Google Ventures, which aims to invest in companies that could improve "consumer internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, and health care, just to name a few. Google doesn't require these companies to even use Google products. They just want to help companies that are doing a good thing to grow. Google could fund some of the most important consumer businesses in the future, which would steer consumers, though the exact ramifications of this are very difficult to predict.

In summation, Google does a lot that will undoubtedly affect consumer habits in the future. They make shopping more efficient and help consumers to be more informed, both of what exactly they want and what they didn't know they wanted until they saw it. People trust Google and will therefore keep using it and clicking on ads. Funds from Google Ventures will have an very unpredictable effect on the future.