Beneficial to scholars and students in the fields of media and communication, politics and technology, this book outlines the significant role of search engines in general and Google in particular in widening the digital divide between individuals, organisations and states. It uses innovative methods and research approaches to assess and illustrate the digital divide by comparing the popular search queries in Google and Yahoo in different countries as well as analysing the various biases in Google News and Google Earth. The different studies developed and presented in this book provide various indications of the increasing customisation and popularisation mechanisms employed by popular search engines, which together with "organising the world's information? inevitably also intensify information inequalities and reinforce commercial and US-centric priorities and agendas.
List of figures and tables
About the author
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1: Power, communication and the internet
Communication and power
The emergence of the internet
The various faces of the digital divide
The online knowledge/power nexus
The emergence of the information society
The power of interfaces
'Informational politics' online
Conclusion
Chapter 2: The structure and power of search engines
A short history of information search
The challenge of the deep web
The challenge of the internet infrastructure
Information protection and digital 'islands'
Interest/internet conflicts
Control over informational commons
The European answer
The long tail of search engines
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Google and the politics of online searching
Google's big idea
Google's search engine mechanism
Google's customised search
Google's additional services
Google Scholar
Google Translate
Google's global control by local use
Reinforcing online allegiance
Online manipulation and punishment
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Users and uses of Google's information
Methodology
Data sources
A cross-national comparison
Main classification system
Reliability of coding: the hidden intention
Economic and political value index
Variety of uses
Specificity of search index
Extent of locality
Initial predictions
Results and analysis
Summary and discussion
Chapter 5: Mass media channels and the world of Google News
Online transformation of media and news
Commercial motives and their implications
Google World News
Dominant online states
International concern
International network
The language dimension
Summary and conclusion
Chapter 6: Google's global mapping
Google Earth and Google Maps
Biases in scope
The national security dimension
Summary and discussion
Chapter 7: Conclusion
The importance of information and communication
The power of the search engine
'Googling' and the politics of online search
Information uses in Google and Yahoo!
The world of Google News
The bias of Google mapping
The impact of popularisation mechanisms
The future of search engines
From personal advisers to global advertisers
The future of the information society
Chapter 8: Epilogue
Appendix A: Search engines statistics
Appendix B: Data for statistic analysis
Bibliography
Index
