Google Magnifies the Self, RLST 245

Google states that its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This mission statement is rather generic at a first glance. This is the intention of libraries, the intention of schools, the basic intention of every intellectual, since it is their hope to obtain knowledge and then be able to make that knowledge available to others. However, while libraries, schools, and scholars all have similar intentions, they are different from Google in a very important respect, they are self-oriented. When a library obtains a book, it is kept in its store. When a school hires a new instructor, they are paid to teach at that specific school. When an intellectual learns something new, they first affirm their own self-esteem. Where Google is different is that it seeks to collect and organize information without making any claim to it. Its purpose is a conduit, rather than a focus, meaning that it does not seek to synthesize, but only to collect and relay.

However, while Google makes no claims about its own individuality or sovereignty, it recognizes that the most effective means of gathering information is by borrowing the knowledge of the individuals it networks. Google’s genius, then is that instead of seeking to extract information from these individuals, it plays on the psychology of individuals in that they are naturally driven to socialize, chronicle their experiences, and provide meaningful content to others.

Is it any wonder that most of Google’s apps and services are free? For every YouTube video, every blog someone posts, every photo uploaded, every website created, every business started, it adds to Google’s networked data, making it stronger and closer to an ultimate and literal fulfillment of its missions statement.

In addition to fulfilling its goal, though, it does something inadvertently. By providing free ways for individuals to express themselves, it gives something back. Each individual that has something they feel needs to be said, they have an easy, free, and effective medium which allows them to communicate to the world at large. While Google try hard to be an unbiased conduit for data, it allows itself to become a way to amplify individuality by allowing millions of people the opportunity to transmit their identity across the globe, to people who would never know them otherwise. In this way, Google provides a lens that allows not just the world’s information, but the world’s personality to become universally accessible.