Googling...

The other day I was reading an article by one of Google's creators, Brin, who talked about why they felt Google would be a new craze.  This was written well before Google took off and became the thing we all know it as today.  Back then Google had a humble start, Brin was excited at all the issues with exsiting hypertext search engines that Google could solve.  The humorious thing is, that as Google grew, all of the problems it was created to solve, it has taken on as well.  Brin saw Google as a way to fix the heavily commerical influenced exsisting search engines.  He saw it as a way to cut down on costs associated with human managed search engines.  And he saw it as a way to make reliable and quailty results happen faster. 

Part of Brin's expectations for Google has held true.  It offers services such as Google maps, which I have found life saving.  It also offers handy ways to find basic information or pop culture info extremely fast.  But Brin was a little off if he thought it would solve search engines trying to influence users with commercial information.  Input anything and the first one million hits are almost 90 percent commercial.  And it didn't exactly make searches more reliable as far as academic research goes.  Instead Google has become the number one reason libraries are still needed.  So in a way we should backhanded thank Brin and his fellow creators. 

Google may have made our lives easier in many ways; it has cut down the number of wrong turns I make, made sharing documents easier, helped locate thousands of useful pieces of information, but in the long run Google speaks to why it's important that libraries stay current with technology (so we know how to help patrons) and separate from the technology (image if we only had Google to answer all reference or item related questions! It'd take forever!)