Googlization
Encyclopedia
Googlization is a neologism used by some to describe the perceived 'creep' of Google
's search technologies and aesthetics
into more and more web applications and contexts, including traditional institutions such as the library (see Google Books Library Project
). The rapid rise of search media, particularly Google, is part of new media history and draws attention to issue of access and to relationships between commercial interests and media. The term Googlization should not be confused with the term Googleopoly.
and Lawrence E. Page in Menlo Park, California
, United States of America. Google’s current corporate headquarters are in Mountain View
, California
, United States of America. In 2009, Google turned an annual profit of US $6.520 billion. In November 2006, Google acquired the popular video sharing website, YouTube
for $1.65 billion. Other subsidiaries of Google include DoubleClick
and GrandCentral
.
For more historical, financial and social context of Googlization see History of Google
.
and Alex Salkever in 2003 first introduced the term ‘googlization’ to mean the dominance of Google over nearly all forms of informational commerce on the web. Initially specializing in text-based Internet searching, Google has expanded its services to include image searching, web-based email, online mapping
, video sharing
, news delivery
, instant messaging
, mobile phones, and services aimed at the academic community
. Google has entered partnerships with established media interests such as Time Warner AOL
, News Corporation
, the New York Times, and various new agencies such as Associated Press
, Agence France-Presse
, and the UK Press Association
. Google has therefore become a giant with complex entanglements with traditional and new media.
Above is a partial list of smaller powers that combined make a large, powerful wall. This does not imply that any one "brick" in that wall is by itself; problematic.
A key concept to grasp here is that of "cumulative effect," where no one part is strong or problematic, but when all the powers are combined, the effect could well be strong and problematic. For example the "cumulative effect" of concussion over years of play is important when considering the design of American football helmets and the rules of
play.' Another example: many dangerous drugs such as heroin and meth are outlawed not because one "trip" is so terrible, but that the cumulative effect of chronic use can be terrible.
One legal definition of "cumulative effect" is "the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions...."
and the Oxford English Dictionary (UK). It is defined not only as a corporate entity, but also in the more general sense, as both a noun and a verb. According to Harro Haijboer, Googlization seems to be an undisputed term, most of the time the term is taken for fact without critically investigating it. “The term may be valid in current development but, after a critical look at the history of search engines, may not be as correctly formulated as one might think. My main questions are if the term Googlization is correct in a historical perspective? If Microsoft search engines (MSN
, Live Search and Bing) are Googlized? …or if Google is ‘Microsoftized’? I suspected to find evidence that both search engines (Microsoft
and Google) have had their influence onto each other. There is no way of saying if Googlization has fully taken place on Microsoft search or that there has been a form of ‘Microsoftization’ on the part of Google. In this light the term Googlization seems to be inappropriate and should be rethought of.”.
The term Googlization has always been difficult to define. Many information professionals would define the term as ‘digitizing a library or making something into a Google product.’. However, the definition is constantly and rapidly changing. Googlization can also mean that ever ‘increasing amounts of accessible information [are] available on the Internet; Google makes it easy & convenient to find in one place’, however, Google only makes information which already exists more accessible, rather than creating new information.
argues against the society’s growing dependency on Google search retrieval.Richard A. Rogers points out that Googlization connotes media concentration—an important political economy style critique of Google’s taking over of one service after another online; Liz Losh also claims that the Googlization of the BNF
has brought considerable public attention in major magazine and newspapers in France.
The Googlization of Everything, a book published in March 2011 by Siva Vaidhyanathan
, provides a critical interpretation of how Google is disrupting culture, commerce, and community. In Vaidhyanathan’s own words “the book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?” The author, Siva Vaidhyanathan, also has a blog where he documented the development of the book and any developments or news about Googlization and Google in general. Both the book and the blog are subtitled “How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce, and Community… and Why we Should Worry.” The sentiments expressed by both the book and the blog seem to be typical of many cultural commentators.
Also, despite Google’s general market dominance, some of its offshoots and additional projects have been less than successful. Nexus One (direct-to-customer sales) and Google Buzz (social networking site) all encountered problems when they were first established, problems which they are still struggling with. Also, in early February 2010, Google deleted years worth of archives from six popular music blogs due to receiving several DMCA notices from music copyright holders alleging that music was being shared illegally. This has proved to be controversial for Google.
In terms of Googlization there is a deep mistrust among some members of the general public. They believe that “Google is somehow taking over the world, like some sinister, evil megalomaniac - the latest in a long line of corporate colonisers and cultural imperialists, like Coca-Cola and McDonald's.”.
Google is far from just another search engine. Google is responsible for 68% of all web searches and has launched an array of new services, including Book Search, Google Earth and the purchase of YouTube.
.
Obviously, with that level of success, comes a backlash. There is also the suggestion that Googlization and Google’s market dominance will create a dependence on Google as a means of finding information. It’s been suggested that Google may be able to exploit this fact in a non-ethical manner. Google is also seen as symptomatic of a larger problem, that of people relying too much on Internet search engines to find what they are looking for.
" and its vision is to make all knowledge freely available to everyone on the planet.".
Others have pointed out that the majority of the criticism directed at Google comes from its rivals and competitors. Amongst ordinary internet users however, Google is viewed fairly favorably as a search tool and as a company in general.”
In late March 2010, Google discontinued their China-based search engine whilst continuing to offer their uncensored Hong Kong-based search engine. Google has initially offered a somewhat censored version of their search engine in China. They reversed this decision when they decided that it was in conflict with their mission and their ideals. Speaking for Google, one of its founders, Sergey Brin, said "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls.". In another interview, Brin said “For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and freedom of information on the Internet."
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's search technologies and aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
into more and more web applications and contexts, including traditional institutions such as the library (see Google Books Library Project
Google Books Library Project
The Google Books Library Project is an effort by Google to scan and make searchable the collections of several major research libraries. The project, along with Google's Partner Program, comprise Google Books . Along with bibliographic information, snippets of text from a book are often viewable...
). The rapid rise of search media, particularly Google, is part of new media history and draws attention to issue of access and to relationships between commercial interests and media. The term Googlization should not be confused with the term Googleopoly.
History of Google
Google as a corporate entity was established on September 4, 1998, by Sergey BrinSergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....
and Lawrence E. Page in Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, United States of America. Google’s current corporate headquarters are in Mountain View
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States of America. In 2009, Google turned an annual profit of US $6.520 billion. In November 2006, Google acquired the popular video sharing website, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
for $1.65 billion. Other subsidiaries of Google include DoubleClick
DoubleClick
DoubleClick is a subsidiary of Google that develops and provides Internet ad serving services. Its clients include agencies, marketers and publishers who serve customers like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa USA, Nike, Carlsberg among others...
and GrandCentral
GrandCentral
Google Voice is a telecommunications service by Google launched on March 11, 2009. Google Voice had some 1.4 million users in October 2009, 570,000 of whom used the service 7 days a week...
.
For more historical, financial and social context of Googlization see History of Google
History of Google
This article covers the history of Google, the most widely used web-based search engine in the world.-Early history:Google began in March 1998 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford working on the Stanford Digital Library Project...
.
History of Googlization
John BattelleJohn Battelle
John Linwood Battelle is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media.Battelle is one of the original...
and Alex Salkever in 2003 first introduced the term ‘googlization’ to mean the dominance of Google over nearly all forms of informational commerce on the web. Initially specializing in text-based Internet searching, Google has expanded its services to include image searching, web-based email, online mapping
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
, video sharing
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, news delivery
Google News
Google News is a free news aggregator provided by Google Inc, selecting recent items from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm....
, instant messaging
Google Talk
Google Talk is a freeware voice over Internet protocol client application offered by Google Inc. The first beta version of the program was released on August 24, 2005...
, mobile phones, and services aimed at the academic community
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest...
. Google has entered partnerships with established media interests such as Time Warner AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
, News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, the New York Times, and various new agencies such as Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
, and the UK Press Association
Press Association
The Press Association is the national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland, supplying multimedia news content to almost all national and regional newspapers, television and radio news, as well as many websites with text, pictures, video and data content globally...
. Google has therefore become a giant with complex entanglements with traditional and new media.
Above is a partial list of smaller powers that combined make a large, powerful wall. This does not imply that any one "brick" in that wall is by itself; problematic.
A key concept to grasp here is that of "cumulative effect," where no one part is strong or problematic, but when all the powers are combined, the effect could well be strong and problematic. For example the "cumulative effect" of concussion over years of play is important when considering the design of American football helmets and the rules of
play.' Another example: many dangerous drugs such as heroin and meth are outlawed not because one "trip" is so terrible, but that the cumulative effect of chronic use can be terrible.
One legal definition of "cumulative effect" is "the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions...."
Definition of Googlization
The term Googlization is not universally accepted as a definition for this phenomenon. Most dictionaries do not recognize Googlization as a term, despite the fact that the word Google is recognized as a term by both the Merriam-Webster (US).and the Oxford English Dictionary (UK). It is defined not only as a corporate entity, but also in the more general sense, as both a noun and a verb. According to Harro Haijboer, Googlization seems to be an undisputed term, most of the time the term is taken for fact without critically investigating it. “The term may be valid in current development but, after a critical look at the history of search engines, may not be as correctly formulated as one might think. My main questions are if the term Googlization is correct in a historical perspective? If Microsoft search engines (MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
, Live Search and Bing) are Googlized? …or if Google is ‘Microsoftized’? I suspected to find evidence that both search engines (Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and Google) have had their influence onto each other. There is no way of saying if Googlization has fully taken place on Microsoft search or that there has been a form of ‘Microsoftization’ on the part of Google. In this light the term Googlization seems to be inappropriate and should be rethought of.”.
The term Googlization has always been difficult to define. Many information professionals would define the term as ‘digitizing a library or making something into a Google product.’. However, the definition is constantly and rapidly changing. Googlization can also mean that ever ‘increasing amounts of accessible information [are] available on the Internet; Google makes it easy & convenient to find in one place’, however, Google only makes information which already exists more accessible, rather than creating new information.
Development
Since the beginning of 2000, media scholars have been analyzing and aware of the impact of Googlization to modern human society. Geert LovinkGeert Lovink
Geert Lovink is a Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam , a Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School, and an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam...
argues against the society’s growing dependency on Google search retrieval.Richard A. Rogers points out that Googlization connotes media concentration—an important political economy style critique of Google’s taking over of one service after another online; Liz Losh also claims that the Googlization of the BNF
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
has brought considerable public attention in major magazine and newspapers in France.
The Googlization of Everything, a book published in March 2011 by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times...
, provides a critical interpretation of how Google is disrupting culture, commerce, and community. In Vaidhyanathan’s own words “the book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?” The author, Siva Vaidhyanathan, also has a blog where he documented the development of the book and any developments or news about Googlization and Google in general. Both the book and the blog are subtitled “How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce, and Community… and Why we Should Worry.” The sentiments expressed by both the book and the blog seem to be typical of many cultural commentators.
Criticisms of Googlization
The founders of Google.com have encountered hostility to their enterprise almost since its inception, both in the form of general press criticism and actual legal action. Various lawsuits have included infringement of copyright law; its dealings with advertising companies and in the volume of advertising that its users encounter.Also, despite Google’s general market dominance, some of its offshoots and additional projects have been less than successful. Nexus One (direct-to-customer sales) and Google Buzz (social networking site) all encountered problems when they were first established, problems which they are still struggling with. Also, in early February 2010, Google deleted years worth of archives from six popular music blogs due to receiving several DMCA notices from music copyright holders alleging that music was being shared illegally. This has proved to be controversial for Google.
In terms of Googlization there is a deep mistrust among some members of the general public. They believe that “Google is somehow taking over the world, like some sinister, evil megalomaniac - the latest in a long line of corporate colonisers and cultural imperialists, like Coca-Cola and McDonald's.”.
Google is far from just another search engine. Google is responsible for 68% of all web searches and has launched an array of new services, including Book Search, Google Earth and the purchase of YouTube.
.
Obviously, with that level of success, comes a backlash. There is also the suggestion that Googlization and Google’s market dominance will create a dependence on Google as a means of finding information. It’s been suggested that Google may be able to exploit this fact in a non-ethical manner. Google is also seen as symptomatic of a larger problem, that of people relying too much on Internet search engines to find what they are looking for.
Defense of Googlization
Google has stated that its mission is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". However, Google has become aware of the level of criticism it has been receiving, and has commented that "[we believe] it is popular because it offers useful products and services for millions of people. Google's motto is "Don't be evilDon't Be Evil
"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting...
" and its vision is to make all knowledge freely available to everyone on the planet.".
Others have pointed out that the majority of the criticism directed at Google comes from its rivals and competitors. Amongst ordinary internet users however, Google is viewed fairly favorably as a search tool and as a company in general.”
In late March 2010, Google discontinued their China-based search engine whilst continuing to offer their uncensored Hong Kong-based search engine. Google has initially offered a somewhat censored version of their search engine in China. They reversed this decision when they decided that it was in conflict with their mission and their ideals. Speaking for Google, one of its founders, Sergey Brin, said "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls.". In another interview, Brin said “For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and freedom of information on the Internet."
See also
- Googleopoly
- New MediaNew mediaNew media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
- Criticism of GoogleCriticism of GoogleCriticism of Google includes possible misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy, possible censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as...
- Don't be evilDon't Be Evil"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting...
- McDonaldizationMcDonaldizationMcDonaldization is a term used by sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society . He explains it occurs when a culture possesses the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant. McDonaldization is a reconceptualization of rationalization, or moving from traditional to rational...
- CocacolonizationCocacolonizationCocacolonization is a term that refers to globalization or cultural colonization. It is a portmanteau of the name of the multinational soft drink maker Coca-Cola and the word colonization....
- Internet Search Engines and LibrariesInternet search engines and librariesInternet Search Engines are a quick and simple way to access information on the World Wide Web. Traditional information providers, such as libraries, have been impacted by the ease with which the public can access information using online search. Search engines provide opportunities for libraries...