One of the more interesting services provided by the search engine Google is its "Zeitgeist" feature. This maintains a record of the most popular inquiries over given periods of time and provides a fascinating window onto what Jung called the "collective unconscious."
The top 20 list of inquiries for 2001 include some of the usual suspects -- for example, World Trade Center, Harry Potter, anthrax, Osama bin Laden and Lord of the Rings. But the most interesting thing is that none of these contemporary preoccupations occupies the top two spots on the Zeitgeist list. It turns out that the most popular search term in Google last year was "Nostradamus," closely followed by "CNN" in second place.
We will gloss over the obsession with Nostradamus which, like the Peace of God, passeth all understanding. But why should "CNN" be the second most popular inquiry?
Why don't people just type "www.cnn.com" (or even "cnn.com") into the address box on their browser?
I've asked this question before and received numerous answers, many containing uncomplimentary observations about the laziness or collective IQ of the population of the US. Entertaining though they are, these explanations miss the point -- which is that the phenomenon tells us more about Google than about its users.
How come? Well, it suggests that users have concluded that the chances of Google finding a URL in one go are higher than the chances of them guessing it correctly.
And this in turn implies popular recognition of what is by now conventional wisdom in the technical community -- namely that, in its relatively short existence, Google has developed into an astonishingly powerful service. It is currently claiming to have indexed over 2 billion Web pages; now owns and indexes a huge archive of Usenet groups; and provides specialized searches for images and PDF (Adobe portable document format) files. And despite all of this, Google is still incredibly fast -- not just at finding static documents, but also at indexing new content.
Google's technological supremacy has some interesting side effects. One of them is to take the steam out of the frenzy to register domain names. Two years ago, companies were frantic to register names that were relevant to their business activities -- and being driven frantic by the discovery that virtually every conceivable name had already been snapped up. (The story of how the Halifax's online banking operation "IF" managed to acquire "www.if.com" for a huge sum at the very last minute would make a nice feature film.)
One suspects that some companies even changed their names to match domain names that they had been able to register. Why else would the Post Office have hit on Consignia. Or the former Andersen Consulting on Accenture?
What drove the frenzy was the fear that a company without a memorable domain name would effectively be invisible in cyberspace.
But if Google can find you no matter how obscure your URL is, there is less reason to for panic. Of course it's still nicer to be able to put "www.if.com" on your business cards rather than "www.halifax-bank-uk-online.com," but at least you know that customers will still be able to find you.
The flip side of Google's increasing power is increased responsibility. The service has become the most indispensable tool of most Internet users, and its rankings of Web pages have become de facto arbiters of significance in cyberspace. Yet Google operates in an unregulated space, and wields unprecedented influence within it. We know from bitter experience -- consider Microsoft -- that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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