My final research project for this class is going to be focused around Google. Through my blogging I've found that Google is an absolutely fascinating corporation that is steadily expanding and globalizing our world. I will be looking at previous case-studies and the research of other theorists to find out how Google is changing the way society operates. So far I've settled on three themes that the majority of my research seems to fall under:
(1) Google is a hegemonic force that affects how society obtains and stores information.
(2) Because society often trusts (and chooses to trust) Google results, we are subjected to a small amount of information that ultimately affects (and can determine) how we view the world.
(3) Google is a continually growing and expanding empire that could have the potential to monopolize the information of our future.
Yet as I begin my project, I still have some questions.
- Is Google's success a result of cultural theory? Or is it simply a result of people being lazy?
- Is it actually feasible for Google to have the potential to store 100% of the world's information?
- Is Google ethical?
- How has Google become a leading source of advertising? How does this affect how people recieve information? Do I want to incorporate this aspect of the business into my literature review?
Research and studies about Google have only just begun to infiltrate themselves into a Communication Theory marketplace, but in ten - or even five - years it will be interesting to look back at my study of Google and see how these questions are answered.
I'm curious if you've explored the search engines that existed before Google. I realize that Google is a different animal because it has become so pervasive and become so unilaterally the search engine we resort to. But I am wondering, as silly as this sounds, how people surfed the internet before search engines?
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