Thing Eleven

Thing Eleven – All about Google

I realize that I am of the generation that grew up while computers were becoming a household item and that I am supposed to love all things technology, but I don’t “love” Google. I like it. It is useful in many cases and frustrating in others. I do not like the ability for web sites to buy their way up the search results ladder. I do like that Google keeps a cached version of each page as it was when it was first submitted. I do not like that Google has seemingly no filter about sites it will accommodate. I do like that I can do a quick search for nearly any restaurant I can think of, and in about five seconds, I am on their site.
In my personally life, I use Google frequently. It is nice to have all of that information at your fingertips. However, I almost never use it when I am doing any kind of academic research, as I cannot trust the results I get from Google. I also caution my students about using Google and only just allowed them to start using it (I had only allowed subscription databases to this point). To use it though, the have to fill out a sheet that asks them questions attempting to authenticate the found site for each site they use. Already, in two days, I have had four students find sites they thought were objective scientifically based only to find that they were actually run by a biased group with some kind of persuasive agenda. I am glad that this happened though, as they and their classmates realize that there are many sites that aren’t to be trusted.