| I think some societal context is extremely important in understanding the situation. Yes, Google is a search engine. Everybody who's become accustomed to modern computing technology over the past ~20 years is very familiar with what it is and what it does. At least the more technically-inclined and aware do. To you, it's a cold, logical machine that provides best-efforts based upon their heavily researched proprietary algorithms. That's absolutely correct. To others, however, it's become something else. To illustrate: For many people, especially the most vulnerable to being persuaded by search engine results, Google as become a word as ubiquitous as Kleenex. When your nose is running, you need a "Kleenex", even if you mean "tissue". You probably don't care ultimately if the tissue is Kleenex brand as long as it solves your problem. When somebody says they want to "Google" something, they mean "google". They aren't concerned, necessarily (though bias lives even in pop culture over Bing), whether you use Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, or Lycos (it apparently still exists, at least in spirit). To that second category of people I'm using to illustrate, the problem they want solved is that they want an answer. They've become accustomed to "googling" something delivering them an answer they can generally rely upon. It's a learned habit/behaviour and, I'd argue, hardly their fault. Yes, North American culture could do well with become more critical in its thinking and that would probably solve this issue. Sorrily, getting there isn't so simple. In fact, it's probably a compound problem in light of who is aptly taking advantage of that system of habit and trust. Funny enough, those exploiting this problem are the same who would prefer to remove even further the ability to think critically in US society (and others), by means of cutting back on public services like healthcare and education so that bare survival becomes the mode. I'm starting to get off topic now, so I'll leave it there. I don't have a direct solution. I'm not sure there is one. Google is as Google does, and yes people need to improve at thinking things through, especially what they read. But if you just resign the problem to that last point, I really don't think we'll get anywhere at all. |