• by Amanda , July 6, 2007

Perhaps it’s because I’m not in “the media know” but, to be perfectly honest, I don’t get what all of the hype is about. Every time I open my e-mail, my media updates include at least one article on how Google is buying up minor companies, or tracking my shoe purchases, or entering some market where they don’t belong.

To me, Google will always be a search engine, and a really good one at that. I remember the good ‘ole days of research when you had to try 10 different search engines (AskJeeves, AltaVista, Yahoo!, etc., etc., etc.) before coming up with anything that remotely related to your topic words. Now, searching is intuitive, and Google has everything: news, journals, magazines, even scholarly articles. It even makes patent searches easier- which is saying a lot!

I’ve seen Googlezon and read the conspiracy theories. I’ve read the articles about how the government will use our searches against us. I’ve even seen the Anti-Google Facebook groups. And I still don’t get it. It seems like this is the Big Brother issue of my generation, and maybe I’m just missing the point. I won’t lie, it’s creepy to think someone somewhere could be looking through a list of my online searches. More than just being creepy though, it would be insanely boring!

The fact is that nothing I’ve read thus far will deter me from using Google. The American economy thrives on competition. Google is pushing the envelope, begging for competition, and seriously racking in money because nothing comes close to being as good. Until another company can derive some way to cut my online-search-time in half, I think I’m going to stick with it.