In the years before the internet, people were usually forced to consult separate, unrelated sources in their quest for information: Newspapers, television stations, academic books and essays for a research paper, etc. Today, with the advent of the Internet, the search engine has seemingly replaced the need to utilize other avenues of information.
In 2007, a group of Austrian researchers stated that many people tend to think of Google as a “reality interface.”
The report found that journalism today is increasingly a direct result of a “googlisation of reality.” It stated that 94.8% of Austrian journalists begin research for stories on Google, and 60% used it “continuously.” The researchers state that this data is applicable to most countries world-wide, with some exceptions, such as South Korea.
This raises some concerns about how much influence large search engines, namely Google, have on the distribution of information throughout the world. “Google has become the main interface for our whole reality…with the Google interface, the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools.”
The Austrian study raises some important concerns in regards to our reliance on search engines. In order to get a more balanced perspective, it’s critical that people try to utilize other sources and methods of research, and to understand that Google should not be considered the “be-all, end-all” information authority.
