I had a piece on the BBC News site yesterday. A few people have kindly sent me notes letting me know about this so I thought I should blog it so people know that I am aware of my article on the BBC site. ;-)
I should clarify that my motivation for writing this piece - or any other that mentions Google for that matter - is not a reflection of any personal love or hate relationship I may have with Google.. or any other search engine for that matter. My thoughts on the topic are a result of studying how average Internet users (as in not just me, or just some of my friends and colleagues) find information online. I have tried to make this increasingly explicit in my writing in order to avoid people sending me emotionally charged notes about how I am misunderstanding that one particular company. This part seems to be getting better as no one this time sent me messages explaining to me how to use Google to make the most of it. (Believe me, I know how to use search engines, learning those skills was the least I could do while writing a dissertation on how people find content online.:)
“Referring to Google has become the high-culture status symbol of web use.”
Three or four years ago, maybe. Google’s market share is too high for it to be a status symbol now.
If Google went rogue, it could easily be replaced, for sure, in which case what’s the big deal with our “emphasis” on it? Our (or at least my) loyalty is in the shallowest of soils planted and would not much storminess withstand.
The Deja-Google Usenet archive, OTOH, that’s a real hostage to fortune.
Great piece Eszter!
Anita, when you say ‘market share’, think of who that market is, i.e. regular internet users. I think regular perusers of this blog / colleagues / people I knew in graduate school and so on probably wouldn’t think that referring to Google shows more than average knowledge of the internet. But, when I think of people I know through family,neighbourhoods, etc. I can come up with dozens who probably have only the fuzziest notion that google has something to do with the internet and beyond that are a bit stumped.
That’s just anecdotal - I think Eszter has the hard evidence that knowing vaguely what Google is is not at all the same as being able to use it.
I think Maria has it. I am a “power” user of the net but my wife, when doing an internet search, hits the search key in the IE toolbar, which brings up MSN search. Which is better for finding North London kitchen designers but worse at finding the lyrics to “Choctaw Bingo”
Thanks, Maria, yup, that’s precisely the kind of broader view I am attempting when writing about these things.
Eszter, given your Google posts, if you’ve never seen Newsmap you may find it interesting.
(Actually a few of the members here may find it an interesting exercise in data visualization.)
Up until Yahoo dropped Google a couple months ago, Google had about 80% share of the US market in searches. This wasn’t all through google.com; it included AOL search, Netscape search, Yahoo, iWon, and others, all of which used the Google engine. A search on any of these engines produced substantially the same results. That’s why Google was so powerful.
Check out http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431 for an estimate of market share breakdown in February.
It’s snobbery to think that most Internet users don’t know about Google. Knowing there’s a site called google.com is no special thing. A better hallmark of Internet search sophistication is probably knowing how to use the advanced search functions on Google or knowing about vivisimo.com, teoma.com, and scirus.com. Google is like Kellogg’s Cork Flakes now. It’s great, but it’s not some special tool of the elite.
“I think Eszter has the hard evidence that knowing vaguely what Google is is not at all the same as being able to use it.“ Yes, I agree with that.
Anita, I addressed the issues you raise in this piece. Of course, if you know of other data, I would love to see pointers. (The data you refer to don’t address my concerns as per my discussion of issues in the linked to piece.)
I don’t know why you seem to think I’m disagreeing with you. I’m not. People should be better at searching on the Internet. And I appreciated that paper you wrote on how people search. (You sent me a copy.)
But it’s wrong to think that Google is less than a juggernaut. I do Internet marketing and look at the referral logs for a lot of sites (US based sites aimed at US residents.) These are not tech-oriented sites. They are aimed at ordinary people. And the largest referring domains is almost always Google. Typically the second largest is Yahoo and Google refers more than twice as many visitors as Yahoo. Check out the industry message board at webmasterworld.com and others will tell you the same thing. Google is the people’s search engine (whether they are using it correctly or not). I don’t think it’s healthy for the internet for Google to be as powerful as it is, and I wish people would use other engines.
Anita - I think one of the points Eszter is making is that knowing ‘about Google’ and knowing ‘how to use Google’ are not the same thing. And she has the evidence to prove it.
Also, it’s not remotely snobbish to suggest (or even be able to prove) that a significant portion of average internet users don’t know what Google does. Sure, your friends do. Most of my friends do too. But many, many people don’t. Would it be snobbery to suggest that, say, 15% of Americans are functionally illiterate? (I just made that number up for illustration.) Or that - again, just making these figures up - 40% of them have never learned how to navigate a mass transit system? It’s not snobbery to show that many people simply don’t know how to do something that others take for granted. Especially if doing so helps us to start thinking about how to address that. For me, that’s the whole point of research like this - to find out counter-intuitive things and challenge our assumptions.
I agree that using (and getting the most out of) sites like Teoma is a measure of search sophistication - but that is probably the very highest level of sophistication. Eszter’s research seems to show that your ballpark guess of how sophisticated the average internet user is way off the mark.
Also, you might want to consider that ‘80% of US market share’ of searches is a very big number of people, but not remotely representative globally… ;-) Further, all this stat shows is that of the people competent to perform internet searches 80% are using Google. By definition, it doesn’t show the people who have heard of Google but don’t know how to use it. And the 80% includes but does not measure another group Eszter mentions, people who can type a few words into the box, but don’t know enough about how search engines work to get good results.
Bottom line; for many people, even knowing about Google is rather special, and for many more, knowing what it does and how to use it is very special indeed.
Kellogg’s Cork Flakes
Mmmmmmmmmm . . . . cork flakes.
The argument from the BBC piece seems to more about learning how the different search engines work and how to work them than about any one search engine, just as one learns how to read a reviewer’s comments to see if the latest opera at the Met is worth going to see. A better example might have been MSN search since it lives in 90% of the world’s browser toolbars: it seems using Google has confused the issue.
What’s interesting to me is how this impacts the meta-search engines that use results from different companies (meta-crawler was the first of its kind). If you know how to drive Google (you have mastered how it weights keywords and what stop words it will ignore), what do you lose when you run the same query through a meta-search tool that might rewrite the query as it hands it off?
I wish there was more work being done on keywordless searching. I worked on a startup company that was building out a service for online publishers: the nutshell summary was that each page on a given site was analyzed and modelled in an n-dimensional matrix, and when a user wanted to find pages similar to the one they were viewing, computations of mathematical distance between matrix nodes would generate results that were often uncanny.
Keywords are so 20th century ;-) The guys who invented this technology are still actively developing it but on a self-funded (ie, slow) pace @ www.thinktank23.com.
Is Google different from older information sources in this respect?
For example, most people are aware of libraries, have been to a library at some time and so on. But the proportion who can effectively use a library, and the books in it, to get information is quite small. You need essentially the same skills as for Google - understanding what an index is and how to use it, distinguishing credible from less-credible sources, and so on.
John, what makes it potentially a bit different is that once people have Internet access at home (or even at work if fairly autonomous use is assumed) then the costs of using the medium to look for information are significantly reduced. You don’t have to get to a location at a particular time when it happens to be open, you can just sit down at your own machine. Also, most public libraries would only have so much material available locally. (Of course, as materials are increasingly moved to password-protected sites, the amount of online information available immediately even to those who do know how to find content will decrease considerably.)
Pet peeve of mine.
I’m wondering if there’s not a whole category of jobs that will take a hit as the search engines become more popular, or at least make some professionnal lives a bit trickier.
Search engines/net work tremendously well at trivialising relatively arcane know-hows. Nutrition. Fiscal counselling. Plumbing. Applied statistics. Whatever.
Experts at something are often people simply able to situate the consumer’s case into their field of knowledge, then pick up the Big Book, and apply. Most often fields are too wide to master in every of its technicalities.
But the consumer doesn’t need anymore the years of Big Books study proudly shoe horned into the expert’s mind. Global knowledge of the field is not necessary anymore : simply add criteria to reach the very info about your very case.
And there’s too, increasingly, the global knowledge on the net, if you want to. For the expert, it all the same stopped to be a privilege and to be simply marketably useful.
Mmhm. There are unconvincing tones of new economy baloney to that last chapter.
Bah. Add a few years at your convenience, and it’ll be ok :-)
A more general version of the question.
Is Google reducing or amplifying inequality of knowledge? At first glance, it appears to reduce it, as in Yabonn’s comment. But in important respects, inequality of knowledge is amplified.
For example, I have a lot of half-remembered quotations floating around in my head. With a library, these are almost impossible to track down. With Google, I can frequently do it almost instantly. But if I didn’t have the fragment, I wouldn’t know what to look for.
John, you raise the question that is of central interest to me in my research, but at a bit more general level: does the spread of IT increase or decrease (or leave unchanged?) social inequality? This is an empirical question so I look for (and sometimes collect my own) data to try to answer it. Regarding search engines in particular, my data suggest that there’s quite a bit of variance in people’s ability to find content online efficiently. These abilities are sometimes related to levels of education and income. This would suggest that in some ways these new media and services may contribute to inequality rather than reduce it. But much more work remains to be done on all this.
Didn’t you see Maid in Manhattan, Eszter?
“the nutshell summary was that each page on a given site was analyzed and modelled in an n-dimensional matrix, and when a user wanted to find pages similar to the one they were viewing, computations of mathematical distance between matrix nodes would generate results that were often uncanny”
This sounds like your old latent semantic indexing to me.
“This would suggest that in some ways these new media and services may contribute to inequality rather than reduce it.”
The idea of increasing returns in the context of knowledge acquisition’s been around for a while, and I’d say you’re very probably on the right track here. To those that have, even more will be given …
Eszter,
This would suggest that in some ways these new media and services may contribute to inequality rather than reduce it. But much more work remains to be done on all this.
Even after these tools go mainstream, all possibilities of search engines will not be available to all, so i guess in that sense it will contribute to inequality within the population. Add a layer to illiterate/litterate/literate-and-googling.
But is that contributing to inequality? They only fail in that they can’t make themselves available to all. So yes, there are inequalities deriving from these tools but, as for the contributors, i’d tend to look for the usual suspects of social determinants.
Similarly, it can be said that litteracy created inequalities in that illiteracy subsists, but as for the contribution to inequality, i’d tend to look for the state of the educational system, familial cultural capital, etcetc.
There’s always that sound reflex to check who’s left on the pavement when some New Thing arrives, to see if it’s really a progress or some trickle-down, rising-tide-lifts-all-boats bollocks. I think these tools - just like litteracy - pass the test. Barring the social determinants (and then it’s more of the same), it’s simply a common good without a rarity constraint, and then the more the merrier.
Btw doesn anyone know a search engine that looks for the real string? Without discarding the - and / and ’ and ² etc? Couldn’t get google to do that.
A complementary issue is the appearance of fundamentally dishonest search aggregators such as Dogpile, which merge results from “pure” searches with paid ad placement services, while deleting all info that would clearly identify the latter. It would be very interesting to conduct a study to see how users from a range of educational backgrounds respond to Dogpile’s interface. I fear it may not be just Internet novices who are taken in here…
Yabonn - I do look at those other factors in my studies as well. I certainly include information about people’s education and income, etc. In fact, one of my goals has been precisely to see how those social factors influence differences in people’s online abilities. (The answer is that some do, some do not, it depends on the type of task, it’s a complicated question.)
Ruben P - Yes, the issue of how commercial considerations influence search engine results is also of interest to me. I have a few papers on that.
A different, though obviously related, question. How should education be modified in the light of Google?
In general, I think, technological development has favored abstract knowledge and meta-knowledge over concrete facts. I don’t need to know which US President succeeded US Grant, since I know where to look it up. So people should be taught more political theory and research skills and less dates and battles.
Google is ambiguous here. Obviously, I can look stuff up that I didn’t know. On the other hand, unlike a reference book or textbook, Google is an index to a gigantic unsorted mass. So abstract knowledge isn’t of as much use in formulating a good search string as is some related concrete knowledge.
By comparison, the old Yahoo approach (which I never use these days) was much more like a traditional reference text.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review