Andres Galindo

UWRT 1101-041
Mrs. Thomas
October 20th,2014

The importance of Google

Google, one of the most important resources used when researching about a topic, is a
company specialized in internet related services. How amazing it is to be able to access all the
information known to human in only a small amount of time without having to spend hours
looking for books with the same information at the library. However, Google was not always
around us, Google was founded around 16 years ago in California. 16 years ago, two PhD
students from Stanford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started a research project in which they tried
to discover a better way to analyze the relationships between websites. Thus, they created
backrub, a search engine that was able to get information from websites according to how
relevant these websites were. They later changed the name from Backrub to Google, and decided
to run this innovative company on September 4, 1998 Googles foundation date. Ever since its
foundation Google has been important in everyones lives, and has completely revolutionized the
way we research things and the way we gather information.
The reason I chose this topic is because I have always used Google to research about
pretty much everything. Google has helped me throughout most of my educational career, and
has allowed me to find all the information I needed for my classes. I must admit, however, that
Google has also negative things. In my 4 pieces, I am going to discuss both the good and the bad

things about Google by analyzing Googles Twitter, a picture, a website article and a peerreviewed article that relate to Google in one way or another.
Short piece: Googles Twitter page
Googles tweets talk about the innovative apps and things that Google offer to its users.
Googles tweets show that Google is not only a search engine but also a company that makes the
life of its users easier. For example, on October 11 Google tweeted: Dinner planning for antiplanning travelers: Find restaurants, see menus & make reservations on the go #googleapp. You
dont have to call a restaurant to make reservations, instead you can go online and make
reservations through the google app. Another tweet that I found really useful was: Bills, bills,
bills. Ask the Google App which bills are due and how much you owe.
http://goo.gl/CY0ecY . Sometimes, its hard to remember what you have to pay and when.
Thus, it is amazing how Google helps you solve this problem through its Google app
downloadable in your smart phone. Other tweets talk about tips to start a business for
entrepreneurs, or talk about the current trends in the world and other things that might interest
their twitters followers. Googles Twitter is a credible source of what Google as a company has
to say, and how innovative and useful their ideas are to make peoples lives easier.
Visual image: Googles Doodles

Ever since 1998 Google has been using doodles, which are temporary changes on Googles logo
in order to celebrate a holiday, an achievement or an important figure in history. Not only are
these doodles creative and able to attract the readers attention, but they are also important
reminders of special dates in our world. These doodles began when Googles creators Larry Page
and Sergey Brin were going to the burning man festival in Nevada back in 1998. Since they were
leaving their office to go to that festival, they decided to draw a burning man on Googles logo to
indicate that they were going to be out of their office that week. That is how Googles doodles
started, at first their doodles tended to focus on familiar dates but they spread into more diverse,
worldwide celebrations. These doodles are usually colorful and include Googles letters on it.
Sometimes the letters change according to what the holiday is and according to what the author
of the doodle wants. For example, the last doodle in the picture shown above has the letters of
Google in orange and contains some of Leonardo Da Vincis works such as the Mona Lisa in
honor to his birthday on April 15, 2005. Google sometimes honors countries during their
Independences day and evoke the pride of the citizens of said country (pathos). In general,
Googles doodles are a great way to honor holidays, historical figures and any celebration.

Website article: The importance of being Google by G. Kim Blank

http://www.newenglishreview.org/G._Kim_Blank/The_Importance_of_Being_Google/

This article talks about how useful and important Google has become among the people in our
world. It talks about how easy it is for us to look up information in such a short time while in the past
years when Google did not exist, it took many hours in the library for people to find the information
they were looking for. The author of this article uses a lot of examples to prove her points, in one of the
passages of the article she said: Want to know the name of Virginia Woolfs spaniel? Crimes rates

in Johannesburg? Where potatoes originated? Watch a video of Seamus Heaney reading? Find
out who said, Technology is rather easy? A quick and dirty intro to Hegels theory of the
dialectic? By giving these examples, the author tries to state the point that with Google you can
research anything you want no matter what subject or topic you are researching. The author is
very detailed about the way she describes the good things that Google does for us. How
easefully we have come to embrace that seemingly innocuous, pixilated portal to all things
arcane and ordinary. The author also describes the reasons of why Google has succeeded so
much in our time. So why have we embraced the search engine? First, and most obviously, its
easy. Second, its fast; ever-increasing access speed provides instant gratification and subtle selfcongratulation (ah, found it). Third, googling provides disposability without waste (Logos).
This article also provides some negative things about Google. As mentioned before, these
negative things do not affect me directly but affect those who make encyclopedia and books and
hurt the reference librarians. A lot of people might have lost their jobs due to Google because
Google eliminated the necessity of buying an encyclopedia. Another thing that could be counted
as negative is our over dependence of Google. We depend way too much on Googles help with
the danger that, without Google we will not be able to function the same way as we do when we
use it.
Peer reviewed article. Google scholar: Pros and cons

http://www.emeraldinsight.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/14684520510598066
Google scholar is a search engine provided by Google that allows its users to find full text of
scholarly literature from different publishers. This is a great way to find more detailed
information about books in the web. Thus, this article talks about the benefits and the
deficiencies of Google scholar. In the positive side, the author says that Google scholar is a huge
step on the improvement of internet research of scholar information. The crawlers of Google
Scholar were let in the huge databases of the largest and most well-known scholarly publishers
and university presses (such as IEEE, ACM, Macmillan, Wiley, University of Chicago) (ethos).
This allows people to have the best, and most detailed research available online without having
to go to the library to find the same books. The author also argues that none of the databases that
provide the same information are as good as Google scholar is, and that they also charge a fee
while Google provides the same service for free. However, not all is perfect with Google scholar.
Among the irregularities of Google Scholar is the fact that there is not much information about
the publishers from where Google gets its research from. Another irregular thing about Google
scholar is the size of the documents Google scholar provides. Googles limit is at 100-120Kbytes of the text which is far below the size of the usual scholar article. The size of the majority
of scholarly feature articles are close to or even exceed 1M-byte. If the search term occurs first
beyond Googles limit, the item would not be found. I liked this article over others because it
goes into details of what is good and bad about this additional search engine offered by Google.
In conclusion, Google has its positive and negative things, but nobody can deny the
importance of it in our world and how it has changed the way we gather and use information.
Without Google, our lives would be different and we will be back to those years in which our
way of getting information would be slow, tiring and inefficient.