Hungry Beast, a news program that airs on ABC1 Australia, had a segment about Google a few days ago. The TV show defines Google as an advertising giant whose main goal is to track users and deliver targeted ads.

Many of the numbers that are supposed to show Google’s power are outdated. For example, the number of Google servers was estimated to 450,000 in 2006. comScore estimated that Google attracted more than 2 billion searches a day in July 2009.

Hungry Beast claims that Google “wants to own your phone, your email, your computer and your entire digital life”. Using the verb “own” is inappropriate, since Google simply hosts your email and offers software for your phone and your computer. Projects like Data Liberation show that Google’s doesn’t want to trap your data.

Another claim is that “Google wants to own the cables that deliver the Internet and the electricity to power them”, when Google’s goal is to “help make Internet access better and faster for everyone” by showing that it’s possible to “deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access”. Like Gmail, which offered for the first time 1 GB of storage for free, or Google’s bid in the FCC spectrum auction, which helped consumers because Google convinced FCC to add some new rules: the winner of the auction has to “give its customers the right to download any application they want on their mobile device, and the right to use any device they want on the network”.

The video concludes that Google’s ultimate goal is to gather data about everyone in the world and to show great targeted ads. Actually, Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Google’s disrupting business model pushes the boundaries of technology by democratizing knowledge. Ads are only the fuel that helps Google accomplish its mission.

“We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. (…) With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. (…) By releasing services, such as Gmail, for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide. AdWords connects users and advertisers efficiently, helping both. AdSense helps fund a huge variety of online web sites and enables authors who could not otherwise publish.” (Google’s IPO Letter, 2004)

{ via Harvey Sanchez }

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What Do You Suggest? is a site that lets you visually explore how Google Suggest autocompletes a query. “What Do You Suggest takes a seed from you, then guides you on a journey through language and the collective lives of Google users.”

Simon Elvery, who created the site, found a lot of interesting patterns:

There are some recurring themes which have emerged as I’ve been playing with the site during its creation. Among other things, it seems people do rather a lot of searching on the topics of music, religion and relationships.

Sometimes the results are sad, like the people searching for free ebooks on relationships for dummies, and sometimes hopeful like looking for love.

Health is also a recurring theme with the names of medicines, diseases and symptoms appearing over and over again.

{ via Information Aesthetics }

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From the new archive search front page at PopSci.com:

We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

[via The Robot Group mailing list]

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