Blog Post #4 - Google/Search Engines

 When the World Wide Web was first created, there were just files everywhere but no way to specifically locate them. The search engine was invented to solve this very problem, you were now able to type a word into the search bar and it would give you files that existed with that keyword on the internet. Originally, search engines such as Archie and Aliweb were created to organize the ever-growing discombobulated files on the internet. 

Web crawler was the first widely used platform by making every known phrase searchable. In 1995, Yahoo was launched and search engines became way more important with the integration of computers in schools and libraries. Around this point, spam was becoming a real problem. Especially as the internet started to get used for more commercial purposes, ads were getting in the way of the content people were searching for. Google joined the game in 1996 and built mostly on existing technologies until they unveiled their system, PageRank, which ranked webpages based on the number of backlinks a page had. They also were able to filter the quality of the links so that a link to a reputable website like the New York Times would come up over a spam website with loads of backlinks.

Google also created a formula that would help weed out spam while keeping relevant ads which helped them propel up to the top of the search engine game. This system was called AdWords and it helped companies advertise on the internet easily. AdWords made it easier for companies to advertise their product on the internet through a pay-per-click system. Google was actually sued for this because it was eerily similar to “Overture”. Google paid out around 6.9 billion dollars (adjusted) worth of stock to Yahoo. 

With the growing use of mobile phone searches, people have even faster access to information than ever before. Now with the addition of voice searches, someone doesn't even have to use their hands to find info. This makes information able to travel at ridiculous speeds. People can find any webpage based on keywords from anywhere in the world instantly. To increase mobile users, Google even signed a deal with apple paying them nearly $9 billion a year to keep Google as the primary search engine on Safari. This has made them the top search engine by far and with this, Google has inadvertently created a phenomenon known as digital amnesia or more recently, the Google effect. Because general information is so readily available and easy to find, we tend not to remember that info because it's always available. Why would people remember when the Constitution was written when it takes seconds to look it up? We tend to repeatedly look up information instead of committing it to memory. This may have an effect on our school systems because it's less important to teach facts and dates now that they're always available. The invention of search engines rapidly sped up communication by making it easier to find different facts and opinions about the world. Search engines revolutionized the way we look at the internet. Before them, it was near impossible to find important information on the internet and with all, it encompasses now, it is integral to have a searchable organized list of information.