I've been very interested in the slow, but inevitable build up of Google backlash. Anything that has ridden so long and so high on a wave of positive public opinion has to come crashing down eventually.

What's interesting, though, is that it hasn't really hung on the typical arguments. It's not a "privacy" thing. It's not a "evil" thing. It's not an "its-open-source-but-no-not-really" thing. The big arrow that will stick on google, that will probably lead to the inevitable betrayal of it's fans, is this "bubble" argument.

It's an old argument, but a good one. Google has become the de-facto gate-keeper to the information, and because it's the first (and often only) place people look for information, it's has a lot of power to shape the information that enters your consideration.

The search engine, DuckDuckGo.com has basically been pushing this argument as a way for it to gain the attention of the people, (And, I'm not unaware of their financial incentive to do so; a half-a-percent of world-wide search traffic is worth, what, like a quadillion-billion dollars?). That being said, GoDuckGo seems as though they really are trying to be a viable alternative to Google Search.

Lets get hypothetical.

I have a dog who needs some training. And I need help training him. WHat I need are some training aids for dogs. So I quite naturally put in the search terms: "DOG AIDS"

Interestingly, Yahoo Answers concern about Canine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome seems to rank highly on both engines, but it's Number One on Google. And not remotely what I was looking for.

Take a look at the suggested searches. Both sites nail the "training" component in their suggestions, but Google thinks maybe I wanted to know more about dog STDs in general, and DOG Herpes in particular. Or maybe I meant Cats. Maybe. Although, I'm pretty sure I've never misspelled the word "dog" C-A-T. Go Duck Go does a nice job of suggesting products I might think about buying, because really, information is just a conduit to shopping, in the end.

The point is this: All of these products and services have one thing in mind, at the end of the day: YOU ARE A DUMB SHEEP WHO CAN BE EASILY LEAD INTO BUYING SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE IS PAYING THEM TO LEAD YOU TO.

Yea. It's cynical. But that don't make it untrue. The silver lining around this cloud is that there is hope. Now that you're aware that your clicks are being commditized, you can fight it. Don't let your search engine do your thinking for you. You're smarter than that.

The internet is great and important, but your brain is greater and importanter. Don't stop using one just because you're using the other.