The internet used to be a place where you could find practically anything. More importantly, it used to be a place where you could find what you were looking for, whatever it was, and Google was a fantastic help in your search. But Google seems to be Googling the life out of the Internet.
I don't know if anyone else has search engine issues, but it appears to me that one now only finds what Google is paid to make you find, rather than what you are looking for. Located in the UK, no matter how much I want to find businesses related my field (I'm a professional voice over) in Hong Kong or Abu Dhabi, UK results relentlessly appear. Why? The point of the internet is that it isn't bounded by borders or limited to geographical location, yet still my search results always seem to be guided ever so subtlety by where I may be at any time.
Do you remember when YouTube really was about YOU? You could find just about anything on it and post just about anything on it. Then Google happened and the rules changed. What we thought were real life events and people were actually corporate advertising masquerading as real life. What we thought was a place that facilitated freedom of information and expression became loyal to corporate obligation and consumer advertising then subject to litigation and copyright infringement. There is hardly any YOU left in YouTube, and nothing seems to have replaced it as a place for folks to do their thing. Why is this?
The Internet was powerful because it was a communal collective. It was made up of everyone who used it. But its potential for profit has led to all the independent fragments being gobbled up by corporate monsters. Hence the Internet has become centralised. Let's face it, how can you refuse a huge payday as a small business owner, like Facebook's Zuckerburg or YouTube's Hurley? But as the people cave in, the Internet becomes smaller and less of what it was meant to be. Less of what made it a powerful tool. Sometimes we don't even know when it happens. Nowadays, the Monoliths design their products to appear like boutiques and small creative thinkers - only to purvey a prescribed profit driven agenda that we happily(?) fall for.
Perhaps we don't fall for it - but it's beginning to feel like we don't have a choice. As corporations appropriate all the cyber-estate and make profit the prime motive of the Netscape, we are left to the mercy of the few. They make rules we have no choice but to follow. Or we succumb to the design and accept it as the only option relinquishing our freedom to create, break boundaries and plumb the depths of Cyberspace.
If not for the continual search to monetize the net, we could be enjoying it in all its piebald, multifaceted, multi-collective glory. And indeed, the demand that the internet should enrich the already dominant media firms seems to be a fait accomplis. But we should stop and ask why their profit must take primacy.
In venting my frustration about the hijacking of the internet and ineffectual search engines, a friend suggested that I conduct more research in order to input more specific search terms, in order to get more targeted results. Only problem is that research is likely to be conducted on...ya. Vicious Circle complete.
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