INTEGRITY OF RESULTS, MOSTLY

Held sacrosanct are the actual search results—they can’t be bought. “We take a blood oath on that issue,” says Schmidt. But in a small number of cases, Google does mess with the results. It tries to identify and block results from hard-core-porn sites. It has removed certain links that the Church of Scientology contends are in violation of its intellectual-property rights. In its foreign-language versions, Google will follow the local laws, removing, for instance, Holocaust-denial sites. Some people find this censoring worrisome, as they view Google as an infallible reporter of everything on the Web, good and bad.

Google’s leaders know that their importance often puts them in risky territory. “Every possible contentious political issue comes up at Google,” says Brin. Generally, they go for openness, though they realize that privacy takes a hit when anyone can browse through your life in half a second. Page figures folk will simply adjust: “People are starting to realize, because Google exists, that when you publish something online, it might be associated with you forever.”

“Google is a fabulously important central resource, and bears something of a unique responsibility,” says Ben Edelman, who co-conducted a Harvard study that revealed 113 objectionable sites missing from foreign-based Google searches. Google agrees, but thinks that the marketplace will take care of the problem. “Every Google query is by choice,” says Eric Schmidt. “Our competitors are only a click away.”

Indeed, now that Google has revitalized the world of Internet searching, a new wave of slick rivals has emerged. But as of now, AlltheWeb and Teoma have yet to become verbs. And the ultimate competitor, Microsoft, thinks that Google, despite its denials, really wants to be a portal. “The next step in their life cycle is parlaying all the traffic they get into opportunities,” says Yusef Medhi, head of Microsoft Network. “And that’s where it gets tricky.”

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, however, insist that they will maintain their focus. Indeed, Google’s main efforts have been in collecting more information to search, and providing new ways to do it. The home page now includes a means to search the Web for images, and there’s also a Google dictionary and a Google phone book. If your results are in a foreign language, Google will translate for you. Coming next are special searches for products and quotations.

A recent triumph is Google News, which scours news sites for up-the-the-minute stories, automatically arranging them into a Web page similar to those posted by CNN or Yahoo. Journalism pundits bemoaned how “a computer” could emulate flesh-and-blood editors, but they missed the point. Like all of the company’s products, Google News is not about computers making lists, but formulas that extract the combined judgment of human beings posting information to the Internet.

From the office Brin and Page share—a warren crammed with toy cars, kites, hockey sticks and, of course, computer screens dominating their door-on-sawhorse desks—the cofounders dream up even wilder plans. “The ultimate search engine would be smart; it would understand everything in the world,” says Page.

“I view Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world,” says Brin. “It will be included in your brain.”

So you have a funny feeling you’re being Googled? Get used to it.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 598