Surprise! Google is There to Make Money

A story in the Wall Street Journal Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products serves as a useful reminder for something we tell clients all the time: Google is there to make money, and if your ideal search result won’t make them money, you may get a less-than-useful result.

Google is an indispensable tool when searching for facts, but Google is not a disinterested party, like a good reference librarian. Google is in business to make money.

The story reports that Google buys some of its own ads, so when you search for a particular thing that Google’s parent company Alphabet sells, guess what? Alphabet’s products have a way of turning out on the top of the list.

One of the first things ever written on this blog more than five years ago was an entry called Google is Not a Substitute for Thinking, and it was one of the most read entries we’ve ever posted.

Among the arguments advanced there as to why a Google search is hardly ever going to suffice in any factual inquiry, we argued that Google’s search results are stacked in favor of the ones that are paid for or that Google judges to be commercially advantageous. A Google entry about a dry cleaner in Joplin, Missouri that has no website would not be very profitable for Google, but if that dry cleaner owes you $50,000, you would want him at the top of page one.

The best way to think about Google is to treat it as a meta-search engine. Imagine not that Google will be able to give you the final answer, but a clue as to where to find the final answer.

If your dry cleaner has no website, Google may point you to a site such as Yelp that rates a different dry cleaner in Joplin. Yelp may then have the dry cleaner you want, but that Yelp listing won’t necessarily come up on Google. Or, you may notice via Google that Joplin or the state of Missouri may require a permit to operate a dry cleaner. Google can help you find where to look up such a permit.

Remember, any dolt at the public library can use Google. It takes a person with the capacity to think creatively to use Google to its greatest potential.

Want to know more?

• Visit charlesgriffinllc.com and see our two blogs, The Ethical Investigator and the Divorce Asset Hunter;
• Look at my book, The Art of Fact Investigation (available in free preview for Kindle at Amazon);
• Watch me speak about Helping Lawyers with Fact Finding, here.