Like many many people, I take the tube around London. Upon several of these journeys I have seen what I assumed were rebellious posters on the tube trains stating that 98% of the information on the web goes through 1 company and that company. Who is to say that this company does not alter the truth?
These posters had no identifying marks other than a website:
www.information-revolution.org
Don't go there, you'll only be disappointed. For you see, on the surface this website promotes an underground revolution against the holders of all information, the mighty search engine giant GOOGLE. The website advocates a choice and reminds all visitors that there are many search engines on the internet, why are we slave to one who may be sinister in their motives.
On a slightly more sinister level, this website (while seeming to advocate choice) only provides three alternative search engines and a heady emphasis is made upon Ask.com. This has lead many people to post there with great anger at being suckered by a advertising campaign by Ask.com to gain people using their engine. Which is frankly, disgusting. But I suppose it is natural in this day and age that people seek the truth, seek to be free of spin and allowed to decide for themselves that such an advertising campaign would surface. In short, don't go there, it would probably make you angry. But perhaps the sentiment is right, that we should all think about our choice of information and take everything the media tells us with a pinch of salt.
This is not to say that Google themselves are without fault.
Examine this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zKXCQpUnMg
Some of these things are hard to believe, but I have no doubt that Google gathers information about the accounts that go through it, it is no different from using a points card at the supermarket. You do the market research for the company! But let us remember that this haven of independent journalism is itself, not signed in through Gmail.
Looking further into the matter, I investigated Robert David Steele, a former CIA agent who claims Google work with the CIA and others to gather information about people through the internet. Steele's papers from when he was in the CIA and after are concerned with an 'Open source intelligence'. Having read a little, Steele seems to advocate a policy in which information is more widely available to more levels of the military. He implies that this will make counter-intelligence and intelligence gathering in general more coherent and threats easier to spot. I can see this as a potential nightmare, with more threats appearing than ever before, but Steele wanted to put the power of information in Tactical Officers hands. Open source intelligence would keep a stronger and up to date view of regional trends and capabilities.
The concern for me is that, Steele felt the private sector could aid with this as their intelligence gathering about local trends and the like was more up to date. Not to mention the fact that this could save the Government money. But if this were true, would this not put us in more danger of Google or whomever giving information to the Government of enemies of the state who also happened to be business rivals? Could anybody be that evil?
But read for yourself:
http://www.oss.net/extra/document/?module_instance=3&action=show_category&id=116&language_selection=0
Google writes upon it's website:
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognised as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.
When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you'll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search more than two billion images and peruse the world's largest archive of Usenet messages -- more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981.
We also provide ways to access all this information without making a special trip to the Google homepage. The Google Toolbar enables you to conduct a Google search from anywhere on the web, while the Google Deskbar (beta) puts a Google search box in the Windows taskbar so you can search from any application you're using, without opening a browser. And for those times when you're away from your PC altogether, Google can be used from a number of wireless platforms including WAP and i-mode phones.
Google's utility and ease of use have made it one of the world's best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users. As a business, Google generates revenue by providing advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, cost-effective online advertising that is relevant to the information displayed on any given page. This makes the advertising useful to you as well as to the advertiser placing it. We believe you should know when someone has paid to put a message in front of you, so we always distinguish ads from the search results or other content on a page. We don't sell placement in the search results themselves, or allow people to pay for a higher ranking there.
Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords programme to promote their products and services on the web with targeted advertising, and we believe AdWords is the largest programme of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense programme to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.
To learn more about Google, click on the link at the left for the area that most interests you. Or type what you want to find into our search box and hit enter. Once you do, you'll be on your way to understanding why others say, "Google is the closest thing the Web has to an ultimate answer machine."
What's a Google?
"Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web."
In conversation one evening a friend brought up the fact that over a month or so everything seemed to switch to Google. Do you remember this? I used to use Yahoo, but then (largly due to peer pressure and advertising factors I switched to Google). That was an amazing turn of events. So google goes from being one of many search engines to THE search engine. It is even a verb now.
As I understand it, Google got help from a marketing genius who made this change take place and got a lot of money for it.
My point here is this, Google may be the gateway to a lot of information and has the power to filter that information. If Google, or any other media giant can alter our freedom of information then who knows what the result may be. This is clearly a deep and complex subject. Perhaps some answers will become clear in 'Google The Masterplan'.
Until then be vigilant, but trust no one that says they have found the truth, trust those who are searching. Examine the links at the side, though remember these are my favourites, not a comprehensive list. Check out:
www.infowars.com
As they say in the X-Files:
All lies lead to the truth.
Ram.
