Mergers and acquisitions are common terms heard in business. Changes of this nature in the Internet technology arena are constant. Similar to business in Hollywood where a star that shines today is dimmed tomorrow, a drive to keep the star brightly lit is what both of these industries have in common. In The Search, John Battelle (2005) narrated the birth, growth, and death of various Web technology companies, relating particularly to the search phenomenon where online users seek instant answers to their queries. For example, students no longer have to wait to ask their school or public librarian for help to confirm a history fact. They can Ask Jeeves (who may have a search relationship with Google in the near future). Librarians undoubtedly are split on the technology. On one hand, the search can enhance their job by giving them another tool to do research. Yet, on the other hand some librarians may feel that their work has become somewhat undervalued by persons that continually bypass them altogether instead for the Internet search. Anthony Grafton shared a similar sentiment at a humanities conference I attended recently in his talk, “Into Thin Air? Libraries and Archives in a New Age.” It is uncertain whether technology firms considered the library science sector in their hot pursuit to provide the search answers the fastest. In any case, the search has been birthed, is steadily growing, and is too healthy to die out now. Dan Gilmore (2004), in We the Media, had this to say about technology, “…it’s relentless and unstoppable” (p. 158). Internet advertising and privacy issues also belong to this perpetual technological wave.
In his chronicle, Battelle traced how the Internet search began as an academic cataloging of research, meaning the product in demand was scholarly documents. As the product search changed, various tech companies (e.g., AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite) tried their hand at the search monopoly, and then the focus shifted from primarily collegiate scholarship to potential consumer marketing. Bill Gross’s genesis in the Web advertising industry paved the way for Google, who later perfected his model. To the two things that are inevitable in life, death and taxes, add Internet advertising. These online ads are inescapable and the online user has no choice for the most part. Gross managed to figure out that to decrease spam, the advertisers would pay a fee, hence the original GoTo.com (Battelle, 2005). And yes, the pop-up blocker is a strategy to combat these uninvited guests; however, this defense can inhibit other general computer features such as opening or downloading a PDF document (or looking up an email address in a Yahoo account to send a message). Such an inconvenience may seem miniscule, but if a user does not know the pop-blocker is the problem it can be quite frustrating. Could there be another way for businesses to frugally advertise online? At this moment a solution is not available, yet I do recall a phrase that my best friend’s father has often said, “cheapness is a crime.” At least the co-founders of Google recognized the true cost to the consumer when they declared in their inaugural essay for the new company, “…advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers (Battelle, 2005, p. 92). Unfortunately, the co-founders were not able to keep this idea alive and later resorted to the same idea as Bill Gross.
Another more crucial cost to online search users is privacy. Because we are in a “clickstream” era, as Battelle reported, online privacy is even more farfetched than ever before. Let alone the Privacy Act that was introduced after 9/11, and for good cause, nonetheless marketing and public relations practitioners have a great advantage with this lack of privacy. Case in point, Google Zeitgeist is a goldmine for the marketing and pr industries. This kind of survey provides an overall view of what online users are doing on the web and nothing is necessarily wrong with that. How this data carries over into other areas is a concern. Suppose one is doing an online search on a topic that is not socially accepted (e.g., pornography) for legitimate scholarly work? It would be awkward to then get marketing emails for such, as well as to be listed in companies’ search data based on those kinds of results. This may be an extreme example but it is simply an illustration to note that absolutely nothing online is immune from disclosure. It is a public domain. So, like fishermen, online marketing, pr, and advertising professionals fish for the intent of the online user. Thus, Google Zeitgeist and other such devices becomes the bait at the end of the fish hook that gathers and compiles the largest catch possible via all online users’ search queries.
References
Battelle, J. (2005). The search. New York: Penguin Group.
Gillmore, D. (2004). We the media. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
