A look at the search history is always super interesting. My third most recent search was: “best hikes in the Netherlands”. I wanted to explore this new country on Sunday and find some balance in the nature. With the help of Google (as an intermediary) and Komoot (as an information provider), I found a great route and the plan was set. But it did not happen and I think my last two searches explain this sufficiently: “hospital den Haag” and “taxi den Haag”…
Unfortunately, I injured my foot playing volleyball on Saturday. So I lay in bed with pain and a fat foot. I put it up and cooled it, but it still hurt so much and was getting thicker that I decided I should probably see a doctor as soon as possible. But where and how should I even get there? I am in a city that is new to me and do not know anyone who owns a car. But I quickly grabbed my phone, googled it and arrived at the hospital in half an hour.
Anyone who thinks this is going to be a laudatory for Google and its world brain is wrong. This personal example from my weekend shows very clearly how helpful Google is and how lost I would have been without this knowledge, but it only shows one side of the coin.
Knowledge is power
Foucault in particular has emphasized the importance and interconnectedness of knowledge and power. It is therefore obvious to deal with the power available to Google too
“power [is the] ability to control people and events” (Cambridge Dictionary)
If you stay at the level of my weekend, you might ask yourself to what extent Google controlled me here? After all, Larry Page did not come up to me with a gun to my head and force me to take this or that hospital and call this or that taxi company.
If you stay in this picture, Larry Page just pressed a catalog into my hand in which all possible hospital and taxi offers in the city are listed. Sounds very nice of him and I would not have let the catalog out of my hand at that moment, but he is controlling me anyway. No longer physically, obviously and absolutistically with a gun in his hand, but subconsciously in the belief that I have made my own sovereign decision based on the neutral world brain.
First of all, I have to assume that all possible offers are listed for me in the catalog. If this is not the case, I could be controlled for the first time in this way. There is no way I could take an omitted option because I do not even know about it. Because I do not know about this option, I even do not miss it at all and do not feel compelled not to take it.
However, assuming that all options are displayed, I would theoretically have the opportunity to look at all hospitals and taxi companies and then make my own decision. In practice, however, my foot would probably have grown together crooked faster than I would have decided on one option at a time. Luckily, Google shows me the most relevant results first. It also seems to work so well that I have never clicked on a second answer page. Sounds great, but here Google is controlling me again. This time Google no longer decides absolutely that I won’t choose an option, but out of practical necessity (lack of time) to choose at least one of the first options.
This blog is only intended to provide an initial insight and I will perhaps continue this in other blogs (for example about advertising on Google, or featured snippets), but this is intended to show in a practical way on an individual level that Google is equipped with great power. I don’t want to demonize Google I just want to draw attention to the fact that it is dangerous to portray them as a natural world brain and to unthinkingly assume that they are completely neutral providers of information.
Ultimately, Google is a capitalist company, which strives for economic profit and hides its exact logic from the public in a non-transparent manner in the interests of corporate secrecy.
What do you think?
I agree that Google is definitely not neutral, and honestly it would be very difficult for any private company to act completely neutrally. What scares me a little bit about this whole thing, is how pretty much everyone uses Google, which makes it really easy to forget that Google actually isn’t the one and only provider of information, and that the information they show you isn’t the only information out there. I think this gives them immense power.