The Googlization of Google

Our President uses “the Google”

Sure, the first few years of the best Internet search engine ever were breezy. But now Google has slowly begun to show its true self or selves, to put it more accurately. Not only have they made their search engine dominant, but they have also bought a bunch of other heavily used products of the Web such as Blogger and YouTube. For a while they were the envy of all for good reason. They had reputable labor practices, good food, cool workplace, etc. They were the winners, the cool kids, but didn’t act like it. Unfair. But most of all, they had a lofty self-image, best represented by their mantra: “do no evil.”

In the wake of Google euphoria–the morning-after a night that couldn’t have gone any better–there has been a cadre of media scholars, critics, and Web users who’ve been more than a little unhappy with Google. One of them has been Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at the Univeristy of Virginia, who has been working on a project called The Googlization of Everything. He has various criticisms of Google but I think they can be best summed up as: Google, while branding itself not as a media company–that is, it does not create content, but, as a story in today’s NY Times on Google’s new project “Knol” suggests, it hasn’t really kept to that.

Knol is Google’s answer to Wikipedia. Here’s a bit of from Knol’s FAQ:

The Knol site has one goal: to help you share what you know.

The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, and related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and veracity of information.

Knols are indexed by the big search engines, of course. And well-written knols become popular the same as regular web pages. The Knol site allows anyone to write and manage knols through a browser on any computer.

But doesn’t everything you type into Google currently give you a Wikipedia link in the first few hits? Exactly what Wikipedia and others are worried about. Will Google privilege its own products in the search? The Times article has various people weigh in and doesn’t really argue one way or another–in favor of something like “journalistic neutrality” which in my book just means the lack of any kind of analytic anything. But it did however bring up a very good point about the growth of Google in this century. Will it go through that critical stage in which its attempt to become what it avowedly stated it was not, will it lose its juice? In other words, as what Microsoft attempted in the 90s which was to make operating systems and applications, will Google’s reach towards content-driven web apps undercut its own empire? Well if Microsoft is an indicator, then, yes, Google has everything to worry about. Although Microsoft still makes a crap load of money, it has fallen out of favor with many. Its programs on the whole are sucky and unreliable. Nevertheless, because of its global dominance of its operating systems and Office bundles, it still turns a pretty good profit. But it’s not hot anymore. Microsoft is like Metallica. They were once good and edgy, but are now basically cranky, old and hate file-sharing. Google, by all accounts, is suffering from a mild case of Microsoftopeia. It’s buzz is waning, albeit slowly.

Will it suffer the same fate? I think it is afraid that it will; and hence its attempt to Googlize everything–Google Docs, Google Maps, Google (insert whatever here)–is the compensatory reaction to its own eventual death. Its desperation is even more clear as it has begun to Googlize itself.