AOL Money & Finance

Google's (GOOG) impact is striking, for better or worse

More

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is amassing a huge staple of power over information and advertising these days. The company's acquisition of YouTube last year and the pending DoubleClick purchase are set to begin creating a massive information use overlord to much of the global internet audience. With that, you have to ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky?

I'll pass over the Google-esque and Dirty Harry pun jokes there and say that Google wants every customer to feel lucky using its services. Instead of trying to dominate the internet portal landscape, it's settling for providing advertising for any online venue possible in order to take a small cut of all those billions of transactions. That's a tad more profitable than trying to offer every possible feature under the sun (like Yahoo! in the last six years) while not knowing what will stick to the wall and what will fall down. Better to just offer ads everywhere possible and stick to that.

But, there's more to the Google phenomenon-in-progress than advertising domination. Google's YouTube was featured this year as a platform to let ordinary citizens interact with presidential hopefuls set for next year's election (just over a year from now). Ordinary netizens could whip out that cellphone camera or digital videocam and send a question to a presidential candidate. Would that have been possible without YouTube? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, when Google's services start to allow communication of that magnitude, there's something rumbling going on in the world. The larger question is, can Google continue to "do no evil" while becoming omnipresent everywhere in our lives?

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+203.5210,226.94
NASDAQ+41.622,154.06
S&P 500+23.781,093.08

Last updated: November 10, 2009: 06:54 AM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

BioHealth Investor Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

WalletPop Headlines