Every day, hundreds of millions of people search the internet. Either for news or just because they want to see the latest Youtube videos. All of this is possible by the invention of the search engine. Without it, no one would be able to find any web sites on the internet unless they already knew the exact name of the web site they wanted to visit. In the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Nicholas Carr tries to convince the readers that Google, one of the best search engines, is contributing to his new found difficulty in reading and writing. He accuses the internet of decreasing his and several people he knows attention. The author attempts to make himself and his friends seem well educated, but it still seems like they are ignorant of the internet uses and purpose.
Google has many faults, like most sites on the internet, but it is not the real problem. There are many other search engines that are worse than Google, such as Yahoo. Yahoo is used more often than Google and Yahoo offers the kinds of features that keep a person sitting in front of their computer for hours at a time. It offers games, news, e-mail, instant messenging, radio the list goes on. Google has some comparable features, but Yahoo still has so many more, that Google will have a hard time catching up. This is mainly shown by Google's rank on page views. Yahoo has more than twice as many page views as Google, which means people visit more than twice as many different web pages on Yahoo than on Google. To make Yahoo look even worse, it places many more ads on its web site than Google.
When one uses Google's search engine, you may get ads if you are searching for something that can be offered as some sort of service or product you can buy. Yahoo, on the other hand places ads on the page no matter what is being searched. For example, when "stuff" is searched on Google, no ads show up because there are no products that could identify with something as simple as the word "stuff". But when "stuff" is searched on Yahoo, several random ads are placed on the side bar, even though none of the ads shown sell "stuff". The ads just happen to have to word "stuff" in it. Also, Yahoo has ads everywhere else on its web site, unlike Google. Even if you want to check your e-mail, you get several huge ads placed in the middle of the screen, attempting to pull you into the web.
Google does show many ads on its site, when it applies to your search though. But running a huge site , such as Google, isn't free. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to run a such a big site, therefore ads are a huge source of income. Many of the ads shown are usually very useful especially if the searcher is looking for something to buy. There are ads sometimes that have nothing to do with a search, but no one is forced to click on the ad, it is against the law to force anyone to click on an ad.
The main reason Google shouldn't be disliked is it mostly links to other sites. It only does what you tell it to do, so you have complete control over the search engine. Google will take you where you want and no where else because that's all it knows. So, if anyone is to be blamed for an inability to read something for more than a minute or two because they cannot stop surfing the web is the user. Google cannot be accused because it does not tell you to do anything, it merely presents to you what you want to find. If user does not want to spend hours on the internet browsing aimlessly, then that person simply can stop. The problem is surfing the internet can be very addicting if you are bored. It is just like watching TV, you can be sucked into the screen so easily, and once you start watching your favorite show, it is hard to stop. The internet is no different, but it is not Google that does this to you, it is the sites that contain the content in which you are interested.
Without Google or any other search engine, the internet would be exactly the same as it is now. It would be just as harmful to someone who is easily distracted or browses the internet because they are bored. When you go on any site on the internet, you will be linked to many other sites. Those sites will also have links to many more sites, and the chain will never end. But this is not a horrible thing because we are able to find so much information in such a short period of time that it is well worth it. This is true only if you know what you are looking for and not ready to be side tracked by the billions of other things that can be searched for on the internet. Overall the internet and it's search engines have many more benefits to them then Carr may think.
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3 comments:
I got a little confuse in your post. At first, you show how good Google is compare to yahoo which gives many advertisements that unrelated to our search. Then you sift to how people easy to side track and blame Google for their addiction. To me they are two different topics, but with second thought I get your point. I totally agree with you that people are easy to side track that they forget what they first searching for since there are links after links on the web. It is not right for people to blame the internet for their problem because no one forces them to use the computer all days. Internet is a tool for us to get information and it become a problem when we over used them. It is not the internet that causes us problem but we cause it ourselves by over using it. We become addicted to the internet as we go from one link to another as you have mention.
John, I really appreciate how you illustrate your argument with specific links; the points you make about the difference in search engines (specifically Google and Yahoo) are made very clear by your examples. I have asked many others to do this in their posts this week because without evidence, certain arguments can threaten to seem too general and applicable in any situation. I wonder if we might consider that Carr's point was referring to the Internet in general and to how it has changed reading practices. I do not think he was attacking Google specifically. Rather, you might consider why it makes his point to use Google--how is it a short hand for other aspects of the Internet? How would the point you make about Yahoo, for example, complicate Carr's argument?
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