Review by Choice Review
"... [W]e are not Google's customers: we are its product." With these words, Vaidhyanathan (media studies and law, Univ. of Virginia) begins an examination of Google and whether it is, to paraphrase its motto, not being evil. What makes Google tick is selling individuals and their interests to advertisers. Two of the more salient arguments follow. The company's search engine may be a version of the ad populum fallacy that what is popular is therefore true. Google's algorithms rank search results based on popularity, but people have come to believe that top-ranked sites are better than the others. Further, Google tries to learn a searcher's personal preferences. This leads to the second argument--a person's search results, which are assumed useful, accurate, and true, can be nothing more than Google's version of what it believes the searcher wants to see. In addition, the company's general air of corporate secrecy makes even having an informed public discussion of these issues virtually impossible. On the other hand, Vaidhyanathan is not a doomsday prophet--he uses the search engine and acknowledges its many strengths and positive contributions. He simply asks people to think critically about Google and its role in everyone's lives. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. B. Mitchell Gibbs College of Boston
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
What is the nature of the transaction between Google's computer algorithms and its millions of human users? Are we heading down a path toward a more enlightened age, or are we approaching a dystopia of social control and surveillance? With these and other questions, University of Virginia media studies and law professor Vaidhyanathan thoughtfully examines the insidious influence of Google on our society. In just over a decade, Google has moved so rapidly in its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" that cries of "Google it!" resound through high school classrooms, business offices, academic halls, and public libraries. As Vaidhyanathan points out, we must be cautious about embracing Google's mission and not accept uncritically that Google has our best interests in mind. He reminds us that Google is a publicly traded, revenue-driven firm that is dangerous in many subtle ways. By valuing popularity over accuracy and established sites over new ones, Google sets its own agenda regarding what information is most relevant to users, altering their perceptions about value and significance. Vaidhyanathan admirably concludes with a design for an information ecosystem called the Human Knowledge Project, which would be a more democratic means of parsing and organizing knowledge. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Vaidhyanathan (Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity) delivers another act from his well-worn (and effective) town crier squawk box, this time focusing on Google and its monopoly role in our lives today. While a plethora of voices-Jaron Lanier, Jonathan Zittrain, Evgeny Morozov, to name a few-are screaming to be heard about all that is wrong with our web-technology-immersed world today, Vaidhyanathan is less pessimistic about the future. He has numerous concerns: infrastructural imperialism, corporations like Google filling the voids that were once the domain of public services, soft technical regulation and censorship of the web, privacy trade-offs to enable functionality, and the compromises we knowingly and unknowingly make in using Google's search services exclusively. VERDICT This book is in no way an attack on Google but more like a parent asking a child, "What do you want to do with your life?" then going through all the concerns one by one. Strongly recommended for anyone interested in the subject.-James A. Buczynski, Seneca Coll. of Applied Arts & Tech., Toronto (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
What impact have Google's algorithms and intentions had on our lives as citizens and users of information? Vaidhyanathan, chair of the department of media studies at the University of Virginia, warns us of our own culpability in relying exclusively on Google as a search engine and Web interpreter. In fact, he's pretty adamant about how extreme the company's influence has become-we open our lives to it in ways we don't to even our close friends and family. "Overwhelmingly, we now allow Google to determine what is important, relevant, and true on the Web and in the world." The author, a huge fan of our profession ("This book, like all my work, is a love song to all the libraries and librarians I have known"), also cautions that Google is usurping the role of libraries. We should be concerned, he says, about the threat the search engine posed in its zeal to digitize every book ever published and to make them available in our libraries as Google outlets. The Google Books Project was put in limbo in March 2011 when a federal judge rejected a $125-million legal settlement the company had worked out with authors and publishers, but the giant isn't going away. My question to you is, what are we doing to do about that? Gina Millsap is chief executive officer of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. A Library Journal Mover and Shaker, Millsap is a current candidate for president of the American Library Association. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Information overload is the least of Google's problems in this intriguing exposof the popular website.Few readers need to be told that Google runs on advertising revenue rather than goodwill.But more interesting are the ways in which the so-called techno-fundamentalists have overestimated the layperson's ability to keep up with technological progress and the rest of the world's reluctance to accept its uncensored use. In this provocative book, Vaidhyanathan (Media Studies/Univ. of Virginia; The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, 2005) shows how Google's methods of capturing, storing and filtering information are often elitist and increasingly invasive. With confusing and oft-changing privacy policiesand the tendency to implement first, apologize laterGoogle has kept tech-savvy users on guard and the enraptured masses blissfully unaware of how, and with whom, their personal information is being shared. With good intentions but few enforceable boundaries, the author calls for a legal infrastructure that would keep the corporate giant in check. Vaidhyanathan focuses tightly on Google, only mentioning other privacy violators like Facebook in passing. Citing some of the company's most controversial headlines, from the toddler who was captured naked in his grandmother's garden with Google Street View to the settlement between Google and the Author's Guild over copyrights, the author unmasks the monster behind the friendly interface with the suspense of a horror novel.An urgent reminder to look more closely at dangers that lurk in plain sight.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
