Getting Ogled

I use Google a lot. I hate when I use an internet explorer search bar and it takes me to Bing.  I have no idea how different their search algorithms are but I know I'm not compatible with Bing. I think I'm a pretty good searcher. I know the key words to throw in there to find what I'm looking for. That being said, I haven't like the recent changes Google has made to their pages. I hate the beta search that automatically starts searching while I'm typing. I feel like it almost interrupts my train of thought. Maybe that just shows how focused I am when I'm in search mode. I also don't like that when I push the down button it doesn't scroll like a normal page. It bumps from listing to listing. I need that flow. I also don't like Google's creepily aggressive business model. I'm pretty sure Google might become involved in the regime change business here pretty soon and start buying up countries. So why do I keep using Google? I need it.

I crave information. I eat it up. When I was little my dad was like Google. I asked him tons of questions every night at dinner. Eventually I began to reach the limits of his knowledge and he'd say, look it up. I had to walk over to the encyclopedia and spend the next 20 minutes trying to figure out one useless fact that would satisfy my curiosity. Those days are over. I want information, I get it. I get it immediately, courtesy of google. When my roommates and I get into arguments; the laptops come out and, fueled by our confirmation bias, there's a race to gather information and data. Let's take a sample argument and see how companies are missing opportunities.

My roommates are from all over the country so we've got California, Texas, Virginia, Minnesota and Ohio represented. The military aspect can skew the politics a little but we've still got a pretty diverse group. We're watching Tosh.0 and we see a video of someone doing something that will probably remove them from the gene pool. We applaud it. Then we start to talk about who should and shouldn't be having babies. We talk about the movie Idiocracy and how lower socioeconomic groups typically reproduce at a much higher rate. We've got reverse natural selection. Then we start to discuss federal funding of birth control methods. Now we're typing birth control into google. Nothing from anti-birth control people. The Catholic Church doesn't have something to say here on Google's top 10? Abortion is the most divisive birth control method and I want to push the argument so that's what I go to now. My confirmation bias will push me to type in late term abortion, I know how google works. Jackpot. Priestsforlife.org has pictures of aborted babies. I won the argument.

But let's get a novice googler in there, or someone who is a little bit more neutral. They just type in abortion. Now they've got tons of results offering free abortions. Just "Call to Qualify" at www.ru486ishere.com. That's in the advertised results too. I scan those. They're at the top of the page. Where's priestsforlife.org? Maybe they're budget can't get them in on this one. But focus on the family should be able afford it. Google and Focus are both missing an opportunity here. Google needs to be selling these spots! Sell it to the highest bidder. You think newly pregnant teenagers aren't going to google abortion after they take their pregnancy test? Well maybe not all of them. But I'd say you're missing a decent amount. And you're not even sacrificing the sanctity of the perceived neutrality of the search results because it's in the sponsored results section.

The 2012 elections are coming and Barack's $745 mil in '08 reveals what's on the table. Here's what I would do if I was on Mitt's campaign. Two searches, "unemployment" and "unemployment application." There's only one sponsored result and I paid google a couple grand for it. The result is a page drawing a link between Obama's presidency and high unemployment numbers. Let's say you reach 1% of the 14.1 million unemployed. Employment is probably the number one issue to these people. You just got 100,000 votes for a couple grand.

And now Google has had a little taste of regime change and they want more...