David Carr asks, How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google? His conclusion:
As with most matters involving Google, it is less about the specific activity than the scope of it. A company with Google’s wherewithal and ambition may have the ability to eventually seem like the only choice in all manner of endeavors.
The morning before I went to visit Google, I searched my Gmail to find my schedule and plugged it into my Google Calendar before pumping the address into Google Maps. I checked Google News to make sure that I was up to date on the latest headlines and made a file of questions in Google Docs and then hit the road, driving down from the Bay Area to see the basket where I store all those eggs at a cost of exactly nothing.
When I told Mr. Schmidt I was worried about Google’s dominant presence in my digital life, he said: “It’s a legitimate concern. But the question is, how are we doing? Are our products working for you?”
Why, yes they are. And if a book is ever written about all this, Google will probably be able to serve that up as well.
I hope you’ll forgive my corny title. Goonopoly = Google monopoly. Get it? It’s meant to recall Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic article last year, Is Google Making Us Stoopid? On first glance I confused the two authors. My bad all around.