According to the article, “Google as Big Brother: And then there were Four,” at this stage in the evolution of the web and search engine technology, there are four major search engines operating on the web today. The top two contenders are Yahoo and Google, and there’s no question that Google reigns over Yahoo and the other search engines. However, this article claims that at this point, Yahoo has all the tools it needs to surpass Google as the most-used search engine of the web. However, there’s a high chance that Yahoo will not succeed due to its greed and attempt to turn everything into profit. One reason Yahoo is beginning to threaten Google’s stance is that the quality of the “Google experience” has significantly weakened in the past few years. While the technology of search engines has advanced to the point that any algorithm combination will do the job, the depth of “crawling,” or how much of the web an engine can search to find suitable results, still has ways to go. It is this factor that causes differences among top search engines.

Due to competition with Yahoo, Microsoft began developing their own search engine software, launched in 2005. According to the article, if Microsoft can put aside their obsession with profit margins for just a few years, they could become a serious contender for Google’s place as top search engine. However, they would need to make quality their top priority. Due to the fact that search engine design is becoming common knowledge among engineers, what marks the difference now is who has the means to commit to a high-quality search engine that puts the user before profit margins and political pundits. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask Jeeves are the clear successes of search engines. However, that Ask Jeeves remains a relevant search engine depends, again, on their commitment to quality web crawls. At this point, however, Google is the most successful search engine on the web, and as a result webmasters no longer have a choice in putting up their website with Google. If they do not, their sites will not receive traffic, and there is no doubt about that.

The article also argues that the direction the web is headed in is an important one to many people, from political pundits to the average Google user (which is most people). Advertising plays a huge role in the struggle- users are worried about privacy and companies (and many politicians) support major advertising campaigns and keyword triggers due to the revenues such actions will bring in. This advertising is what is commonly seen on the sidebars of a Google search results page that offer services or products related to the search just entered. Google is profiting hugely from such advertising where it once was ad-free. However, while Yahoo has the tools and potential to surpass Google, it does appear for the moment that they are more interested in money from advertising than quality searches. The point is also made that while public-sector sites, such as those with the top-level domain of org, edu, or gov, do not offer income to search engines, yet Google goes to great lengths to crawl them. All the same, there is great need for search engines that specifically search such sites, and to date no one has stepped up, despite the increase in quality it would bring to the web as a whole. Nonetheless, the web is becoming a less and less attractive place to be, while it steadily becomes more and more necessary to business and communication.

Yet another issue regards the massive banks of data Google has and still collects on their users, and who has the right to that data. While discussion of consumer rights in terms of their searches has always been important, since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, the issue at the forefront is the privacy rights of users in terms of government tapping. Google has not chosen a side, and as a major player in the game, what they decide will be of great importance and significance. These issues magnify the influence Google has on the global and national communities, as well as its specific search engine competition. This also brings up another criticism of Google policy. That PageRank favors “popular” websites as opposed to quality sites for its search results is a major complaint. It has been called “anti-democratic” and proves further that Google has made questionable decisions regarding user preference and rights.

Google’s questionable decisions include the one that led to the inclusion of the cookie that expired in 2038. This cookie attaches to your hard drive when you go to a Google site. The cookie assigns an ID number to the hard drive. At the time, immortal cookies were still illegal and this cookie was a loophole around that law. Google also records the information they collect from the cookie, which includes your IP address, the time and date, search terms, and browser configuration. As time goes on, Google has been customizing results based on your IP address with increasing frequency. The company has also remained silent on why they need access to such data and what they use it for. Google has hired questionable people in the past as engineers, and their toolbar search feature updates without prompting and records all pages the user visits online, and has access to your computer’s hard drive. They have also changed the options so that webmasters must include “nonarchive meta’ in the header of every page they don’t want Google to have access to, so that the effort goes into denying service as opposed to accepting it. Overall, the article argues that Google has too much power and it’s an accident waiting to happen.

Personally, while the article makes many good points, I can’t help but feel it was written in an unprofessional manner and therefore do not know how trustworthy a source it is. It comes dangerously close to sounding like a conspiracy website. That aside, I feel that too much power in the hands of one company undermines the original purpose in mind for the designers of the web. This technology was supposed to be accessible and free to all, as a means of global communication. These issues bring to mind the issues of net neutrality- that is, who holds the rights to preference of information and level of quality for web users. So no, I don’t think it’s right for one company to have so much power, and it worries me that they have access to my information. That said, as a user of the web I must act responsible and cautious in my searches. As in life, one must be accountable for their actions and it’s far too easy to point a finger to “big, bad, corporate America.” Consumers must keep in mind that when they take advantage of free services such as Google, there are always pros and cons.