Google and the Culture of Search

Citation

Stuart, D. (2013), "Google and the Culture of Search", Online Information Review, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 661-661. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2013-0116

Search is increasingly integrated into every area of our lives: when we have a question, we search; when we want to find something, we search; when we do not know what we want, we search. Yet for most people Google and other search engines are black boxes. People enter their queries with little thought about the workings behind the scenes that produce the search results, let alone giving any thought to the impact of a culture of search on our lives. We may occasionally consider Google's dominance in the search market and promise to use alternative search engines more often, but the idea of search itself is rarely questioned. In fact, as the authors of Google and the Culture of Search argue, search is now the way we live with information being mixed up with reality, and Google more like a religion than a company.

In addition to an introduction and an epilogue, Google and the Culture of Search consists of seven chapters. It starts with a history of Google to provide context for the book and then goes on to explore the idea of ranking and relevance, as well as the growing theory that everything that matters can be found on the web. This is followed by three chapters exploring the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Google: universal libraries and thinking machines; twentieth century ideas of a world brain; and the contributions of information scientists such as Eugene Garfield and Vannevar Bush. The penultimate chapter considers a modern attempt to implement a universal library in the form of Google Books, and the final chapter considers Google as a techno‐theological entity, with its infamous unofficial motto of “Don't be evil” and the inevitable cultural response of the Church of Google.

For those for whom discussions about information resources are generally of a more practical persuasion, a book that touches upon metaphysical and epistemological concerns may be considered a bit heavy going. But if it is not for the library and information professional to take a step back and consider the role of Google and search, then whose job is it? Google and the Culture of Search is a book that I have no qualms about recommending wholeheartedly, although if there is a limitation, it could only be that it deals with the concept of search in isolation from that other dominant web technology of the twenty‐first century, social networks.