Hold On, I’ll Google it

“Hold on, I’ll Google it.” How many times have you heard or said this? No corporation that holds a monopoly on a product will go down without a fight and the newspaper industry was no exception. In this case, the product is information, which Google provides for free because corporations pay them to advertise. This is the same model newspapers use, but newspapers exploit the sale of advertisements AND information. Google’s business model cuts the sale of information and provides a new outlet for Journalist to make money and distribute information. Why pay for information when you can get it for free and pay with something other than money: curiosity. Google keeps the consumer’s interest in mind and it’s usefulness is unarguable when comparing their success to others like them. Google is innovative; there are many Google products that help you connect to their digital services. When times change you have to change with the times. The television may have wiped out radio had radio not changed their content and the way they presented it. Google didn’t start as an electronics manufacturer, but they found other markets to make revenue in. This is how businesses survive. Now, A problem is posed: An online news source received a lot of traffic, and therefore money, because the model Google used to choose search results favored the plagiarized story instead of the original. If the objective of the article was to boost the traffic of the original website, then they should have made sure they were maximizing their chances of being selected by Google. Journalist’s ethics are challenged in this scenario. How much of that story was plagiarized and how much of it exposed a story for other journalists to investigate? There is no harm in doing your own information gathering to present to your audience. This ensures consistency and, ultimately, a system of checks and balances for our news system. On the other hand, if we are just reading the same article butchered and regurgitated, then some one needs to be held accountable. No one should trust websites or news sources that ignorantly summarizes an original article. I rather read the original authenticated version.