Since its inception in 1998, Google has become a ubiquitous entity on the Internet, the place to go if you're looking for anything from help on a term paper on the sexual behavior of frogs to Princess Diana's autopsy photos. It was on the cover of Newsweek recently, and has managed to flourish despite the dot-com bust earlier in the decade. It has expanded to include a vast array of services; indexing not only the World Wide Web but also images, newsgroups and businesses.
Unfortunately, Google is a tool that can be used for both good and evil. To paraphrase Al Franken, it's much like how a saw can be used positively -- to give the illusion of cutting a woman in half during a magic show. Or it can also be used negatively -- to actually cut a woman in half.
The most recent trend is "Googlebombing," which is as 21st century a problem as our society has experienced so far. Basically, Google doesn't just search the Web for content, it also searches for how many times something has been linked under certain terms. Therefore, pranksters can relatively easily manipulate the results of a Google search.
For instance, if you search "miserable failure" under Google, the first Web site listed is the White House's biography of George W. Bush. Of course "miserable failure" certainly can't be as popular as a search as "hot naked lesbians" or "bukkake," but it still shows cracks in the Google system.
Further evidence of the problems with Google came to light with another Googlebomb. When searching for the word "Jew," the first site listed is, www.jewwatch.com, which keeps a "Close Watch on Jewish Communities & Organizations Worldwide." It's a database of links to such blatantly anti-Semitic categories like "Jewish-Zionist Anti-American Spies," "Jewish Controlled Press" and, most puzzlingly, "Jewish Mind Control Mechanisms."
Despite the amount of power and influence Google has gained recently, it's easy to see that the Wild West period of the Internet is still in effect. The days where some fringe nerds could hack into a government Web site and turn it into a tribute site to Queen Amidala may be over, but it's clear that in some ways the Internet is still uncharted territory, and Google is the unfortunate victim.
The real problem with Google lies in the nature of the search engine itself. Unlike other search engines that it has surpassed in notoriety and prosperity, like Yahoo!, it simply takes a mechanical search of how often a query is found or linked to on a Web site.
With Yahoo!, a site had to submit and was characterized by relevance, so if you were searching for the country "America" or the 1970s folk rock band "America," it would know the difference. Let's just say that when I was trying to do an image search of the singer "Pink," not everything I found was as PG-rated as one might hope.
Google is much more like a giant commercial fishing net, sweeping the sea clean. Sure there might be some tuna in it, but you're going to have to discard lots of dolphin to get to what you want.
Every major piece of technology has its drawbacks, though, and Google is still powerful enough to be incredibly useful. Personally, I've found Google most valuable in the field of revenge. During my freshman year here at ASU, one of my high school classmates had his heart set on establishing himself as a "cool dude," living a life of promiscuous sex and drunken partying. Now, I knew this guy as a classic nerd, and it was both disheartening and embarrassing to see him try to pass himself off as Zack Morris when he was obviously Screech.
A quick Google search of his name provided me with best ammunition anyone could ask for, a Star Trek role playing game Web site that he was the "president" of a couple of years back. The site contained a hilarious and dead serious manifesto in which he disclosed his plans for the club, including a slow-burn expansion of this Star Trek RPG club. Proliferation of this info was inevitable, and needless to say, the guy was knocked down a few pegs.
Quick, high-powered revenge on people from high school? Truly technology at its best, and surely what the founders of Google intended.
Albert Ching is a journalism junior. Reach him at albertxii@hotmail.com
