Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Ask Google about bullfeathers and other random items

Asking Google a question is a routine everyday thing for most of us.

It's not unusual
Your question will simply be one of the hundreds of millions it receives every day from all over the world. The wonder of it all, is that in 2.8 seconds it has scanned some 30 billion Web pages and a couple of billion images, and produced scores of possible answers.

Bull filtering not possible
Pity the researcher who has yet to develop what Ernest Hemingway called an essential tool of the trade, a 'bullfeathers' detector.

Chinese Google play

The 300 million Chinese Internet users already exceed the population of the US by 100 million and less than half of China has access to the Internet. Future Internet Traffic will be dominated by the Chinese language users and that is going to be a substantial overhead on the pipes.

Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt sees a Web where Chinese is the dominant language and connections are so lightning fast that distinctions between audio, video and text will blur, all within five years.

By redirecting and filtering the Chinese users away from the English-language users, Google are bypassing a possible clash of interests and blockage in traffic. Hopefully, they are also ensuring that the English and other non-Chinese speakers, won't be 'hampered' by Chinese users. They, in turn will have their own slice of Google's globe.

In my cynical imagination, I believe the Chinese authorities would also be very pleased to have their people separated from the rest of the traffic. What big eyes you have grandma? All the better!

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