What’s wrong with Google

When the internet was young and innocent, finding things was difficult until advent of the search engine. There were many early models, alta vista, yahoo, lycos and others but Google set the benchmark back in 1998.

From the beginning Google was all about providing the best results for each search. The mantra ‘do no evil’ was the golden rule. Trouble is that rule is now very tarnished. The latest incarnation of Google is flawed in so many ways that finding the right information first time round is becoming very difficult.

So where has Google gone wrong?

Google has just about stopped being a catalogue of websites, it now personalises everything: it records the sites you visit, how long you stayed, where you clicked and what you did.

For a while this was only relevant if you were signed in to a Google account, you could add notes, promote, demote or even remove sites. Google has now completely moved the goal posts, they now track your every move through their cookies. If you have a site you visit regularly Google will remember and show this site at the top of your searches. So rather than provide the best results, Google is now trying to second guess what it is you want.

For a long time you would get lots of good results when searching for news and other topical subjects. Now you get hastily written blog posts, videos and even twitter feeds appearing in the search results pages. Add a couple of sponsored adverts and there is hardly any room left for the authoritative entries.

Technology Rules OK

Because it is easy to scrape, steal and publish any old rubbish there are thousands of websites filled with garbage. Where once you could find good quality articles, reports, lists and even entertainment, we now have the social networking dogpile. Websites with top 10s of everything, facebook groups designed to incite, homemade videos of stupitiy and the all embracing twitter. None of it is new. It’s all recycled material. Google loves this rubbish.

Beware the free gift

Google is taking over the world. There’s gmail and igoogle, googledocs, the chrome browser, android, the google phone, adwords and adsense and any number of other freebies available. It’s no longer about search, it’s all about Google controlling every aspect of your online life. If Google had their way you would be using their products to manage your email, documents, finance, searching, entertainment, banking and so on.

Whilst all these products seem like a good idea I means you are totally reliant on one company. If anything went wrong you would be totally stuffed.

Time for a change?

Well you could use other search engines. The only problem is that the choice is limited. Bing seems to doing ok, yahoo is still a credible alternative as is ask but that’s about it.

It seems that Google is the dominant player for a the time being. And I’m not so sure this is a good thing.