Search Engines: Shortening Distances
The Economist made a brash statement in saying that, “IT is supposed to reduce distances and bring people closer.” (Thinkers)While the Economist further wrote in its article that the internet has not achieved this objective to the fullest, it is clear that IT has indeed succeeded to an extent. Search engines have contributed to a greater human cause through its innovative peripheral services in fulfilling their aggressive broadly-defined goals.On a more micro scale, search engines have had a direct impact on the expansion of several existing and new industries in the economy.Lastly, search engines have impacted the national and world economies on a macro scale by contributing to the increase in productivity.
Google, the world’s largest search engine, has a self-proclaimed goal “to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible.”(Pertz 5) This mission nearly runs parallel to the textbook definition of development and therefore the company goes beyond just offering search services but aims to help at a more human level.Google Labs, the innovative branch of the company, takes this task head-on by creating new services that often fulfill its overall mission such as the Google Library project.By essentially bringing a library of books to users, Google will increase the ease of obtaining books. While this advancement in information circulation affects all users, it perhaps affects disabled users the greatest as it brings books to their homes via computer. Furthermore,Google’s Library will go above and beyond the internet offerings as it will offer authorized books in alternative forms (Braille) to people with disabilities through authorized entities (Fruchterman 4).
Google and Yahoo have all provided a significant amount of original content, wider access to internet content, and increased exposure for advertisers.These contributions have allowed several existing industries, most notably sports and music, to significantly expand by using the internet as another distribution channel. Perhaps the most obvious industry expansion came in music as the digital revolution took the internet by storm. Yahoo did not hesitate to provide its music mp3 services in addition to linking to the popular mp3.com and related sites.Yahoo and search engines were a facilitator of the digitalization of the music industry. Similarly, search engines have had a major impact on the expansion of the sports industry on the internet. Yahoo also added a vast sports section to their website and played a key role, through advertising, in the porting of sports television stations ESPN and CBS Sports to the internet. Among the increased awareness of sports sites are “team's websites [which] are used to boost the sales of their products. Most sport teams are creating online websites to create a more interactive online fan community”. While search engines have increased visibility of sports and digital music directly and indirectly, websites have created new business focuses which have in turn increased the popularity of the search engines themselves. For instance, the rise to prominence of blogs was mainly due to search engines. Blogger.com, a Google owned site has risen to prominence as a top blogging service through the supervision of Google. Google and Yahoo run successful eponymous blog sites which they have raised under their own initiatives. Search engines have undoubtedly brought people together through the expansion of music and sports industries as well as the more evident blogs which directly share people’s thoughts.
On a more macro scale, search engines and e-commerce have contributed to an increase in overall economic productivity. By increasing the visibility and accessibility of websites, search engines have been the foremost component of IT which promotes perfect competition. Search engines’ shopping and shopping comparator services such as Froogle and Yahoo Shopping have decreased the prices of most items.
Search engines and e-commerce both have made significant contributions to economies and development on both micro and macro levels. These contributions can be seen through linkages to the disabled, music, sports, blogs and even scarcity of resources. These relations transcend the fact that search engines act as a mere portal to the internet by “reduce[ing] distances and bring[ing] people closer.”