The Information Not Accuracy Age
December 7, 2016
The impact of Google on our lives is clear through the company’s name being used colloquially as a verb. However, Quantum Run reminds us of their impact, quantifiable, in their piece called All hail Google. Google owns 80% of the smartphone market with over a billion android devices. Gmail’s users tally at 420 million users and Chrome has 800 million users. Also, YouTube, which Google owns, has one billion users. An interesting factoid the article pairs with these stats is that 94% of students equate Google with research. The article notes:
The American Medical association voices their concerns over relying on search engines, saying, “Our concern is the accuracy and trustworthiness of content that ranks well in Google and other search engines. Only 40 percent of teachers say their students are good at assessing the quality and accuracy of information they find via online research. And as for the teachers themselves, only five percent say ‘all/almost all’ of the information they find via search engines is trustworthy — far less than the 28 percent of all adults who say the same.
Apparently, cybercondria is a thing. The article correctly points to the content housed on the deep web and the Dark Web as untouched by Google. The major question sparked by this article is that we now have to question the validity of all the fancy numbers Quantum Run has reported.
Megan Feil, December 7, 2016
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