23 years. Do you think Google has made the world a better place?

I'd say no, since the search results are based on ad revenue and/or other nefarious factors.

Unless it says AD on it, search results aren't based on ad revenue.

It's easy to get mad at Google for "tracking us" but so do credit card companies, credit agencies, the government, internet providers, any streaming video service, and pretty much anything else.

If Google had never been born do you think we'd be living in a 1950s world where the only tracking would be your address in the phone book?

Even Google Maps is a huge advance and it's not even that high on the list of their achievements.

But I don't think Google invented the tech...they bought the company that had developed it (Keystone or Keyhole, or something like that). Similar to YouTube being bought by Google.

Youtube was a fairly complete product. The map stuff they bought was mostly about the data behind the scenes that did route planning. I don't think it was even a web interface. It may have been something you could buy and install and print out on your home computer. Google took it, put it on the web, and then in phones, made it real time with traffic and expected travel times based on the current day, and put it all on your phone so your phone is literally better than standalone gps mapping units. In the mid 2000s we were still printing out mapquest directions. Right now that feels as ancient as using dial up internet.

23 years. Do you think Google has made the world a better place?

23 years. Do you think Google has made the world a better place?

Sort of.

Basically it's leveled the playing field. It used to be a bigger divide between smart people and dummies.

Smart people can survive without Google.

It's made dummies appear much smarter.

23 years. Do you think Google has made the world a better place?

Google is a net positive in terms of what they provide. If you don't like them, it's fairly easy to use Opera and DuckDuckGo if that's your preference

Google is arguably more powerful than any empire in history.

information is useless if you cant contextualize it. its why you still need to remember stuff and why recall and memorization is such a crucial part of understanding.

information is useless if you cant contextualize it. its why you still need to remember stuff and why recall and memorization is such a crucial part of understanding.

People don't need to remember. They can just Google it.

That's what terrifies me with respect to one of Elon Musk's companies, Neuralink. Their goal is to create a human brain to computer interface whereby you would have a chip implanted and have instant access to Google and the full internet. It sounds useful on the surface, but I can imagine people feeling pressure to have it done to them, lest they or their kids fall behind others who have the implant. A real Gattaca nightmare.

Humans are pretty terrible at remembering stuff though. That's why the printed word was such a revolution. If you gave me the final exam from my US history class in high school I'm guessing I've forgotten more than half of the answers.

well yeah that's because you haven't stuck with it or done any work to keep it fresh. dates, places and people are so important because if you cannot know those things then everything will appear to occur in a vaccuum. or worse yet somebody can easily mislead you into drawing connections that don't exist.

Really hard? No. Its not that difficult. I memorized all the British prime minsters, their party and at least one or two things they did. Every month or I so I retake the sporcle quiz to keep it fresh, takes like ten minutes. A lot of work boy you just have to remember to do it. I promise you have the free time and spare energy.