As a 21-year old, I can not think of a day when I did not have Google to use to help me with homework, finding directions or looking up interesting stories. Since 1999, Google has been evolving and making encyclopedias a thing of the past. The public use it as a way to search for specific stories and to help with papers and projects. Google has made it to where they have gotten inside our brains to where when we don’t know something and we need to look it up, the first thing we think of using is Google.
Also, using Google helps us use less keystrokes because of the fact that they have made it where if you just type in a few letters of word, a plethora of examples come up in a drop-down box. This makes it even more efficient for us to use Google and makes it the search engine we flock to. The other thing is the additions of Google email and Google translate which has made it easier for people around the world to understand each other.
But with all these new additions and ease of searching, they are slowly getting into our personal lives. The reason being is because of all the advertising the Google uses on a daily basis. Those advertisers know what you have been searching for, so if you are looking for cures, they know that you have been sick. Also, when you look up golf balls they think that your hobby is golf and they use that to their advantage and start advertising more for golf balls and golf related items. There are some people that think that if we want what’s best for us search engine wise and advertisements that interest us, then we need to let these people into our souls. These advertisers need to know what our personal lives are like and what we fancy.
If this is really all it’s come down to, is Google starting to control us all? It has already gotten inside our heads and made us think of them first to search for something and they know a lot about us because of our emails and what we search for. It’s a question for the masses, but personally, I don’t think they have started controlling us overall, but at least when it comes to decision making and search engine choices, they definitely have.