i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I am starting to feel very concerned about Google's new Public DNS service. It seems that Google is trying to build its own Library of Babel collecting as much information as it can in order to improve its knowledge of web usage. I haven't read their privacy policy, but this opens new possibilities for targeted advertising.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/02/google.search.obama/index.html

The picture is no longer the top hit when you search for 'michelle obama' but is when you search for 'michelle obama ape'.

I liked this quote:
"A result that you're not looking for is not a good search result," said Rubin, the Google spokesman. "It's not a good search experience."

Google realizes that its search algorithm is far from perfect. It seems that even the "politically incorrect" opinions could be able to show up in the first places out of Google control. If you search for words such as "jew" or "obama" you may find disturbing results and images.

When reading this article I had a hard time with the author's assumption that search-engine users should be engaging in "deliberative debate" by default. Many searches are conducted with the simple goal of answering a question, or getting very general information on a topic. If I search for "flowers," I'm asking about a very, very big topic. We've previously learned that users rarely pass the first page of results. In the ten hits my search engine returns, should several of them be devoted to fringe controversies involving flowers? I think not.