The Googlearchy

The assigned readings in Hindman's book for this blog assignment were almost painfully obvious to me as I paged through them but allowed me to take a step back and ponder why I never truly realized how important Google is to the structure of the internet. Indeed, to some folks, Google is the internet- a virtual genie with a simple, welcoming box for you to enter a search query so that it can magically take you to the site you'd like to go to. It is amazing how valuable that service is to any internet patron. However, it is especially valuable to internet sites that are looking to receive heavy traffic. Google's ranking system works on a series of hyperlinking that goes on throughout the internet. Therefore, any page that receives heavy traffic through a Google search, or is heavily linked throughout the internet's structure, will appear higher on Google's rankings.

Google reigns as King of the internet traffic, which is why they were able to become such a successful business. I haven't looked at the profit margins but I'm sure they have to be one of the largest of any company simply because the business is built on Google Search- a service that doesn't cost Google too much, but brings in billions of dollars in revenue from sites that want to be ranked higher, as well as businesses that want to advertise what they are selling.

As I sat there thinking about King Google, I began to imagine how the world would change if Google began to charge for the use of their Search engine. Then I realized that as users, we do pay for their services. We pay for them with our privacy. Google knows everything about us individually. Once we are signed in, they can track every single one of our clicks, and even if we are not signed in, they can still follow our IP addresses. Everything is essentially public. This is why I sometimes notice the ads that appear in my Gmail pertain to the content within my mail. With insider knowledge about users like that, there is no wonder Google reigns King.