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ESSAY #3

DR. MELINA PROBST

How
Google Dominates Us
By Team Eloise/Brian/Jay

In a society where information is as important as currency, technological advance has


been the driving factor in the accumulation of knowledge that mankind craves.The internet has
been key in this matter. It has been a long way from its creation in the 60s for government and
research purposes to today.
Since the inception of public internet browsers in the 90s like Netscape Navigator and
later Microsofts Internet Explorer, along with search engines like AOL or AltaVista people have
changed the way they seek out information. What used to be a visit to the library, or buying and
studying a bulky Encyclopedia set is nowadays as simple as typing a question and hitting the
Enter key stroke in almost any computing device that is connected to internet.
Today a plethora of sites and search engines exist to choose from, but the most popular
one is Google. This search engine has come a long way since its beginning in the late 90s as a
research project by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin Ph.D. to the powerful
browsing tool that we are familiar with. Google has been a driving force in computer science.

This advance has not been without controversy. As with many online information tools,
Google users are concerned about the potential danger of somebody else being able to acquire so
much information, especially when it is about ourselves.

Author James Gleick on his review called How Goggle


Dominates Us, based on 4 books about Google, and his personal
research, does a good use of rhetorical devices to try to have an effect on
his audience.
Instead of reviewing the books directly, his main focus is about Googles history, its
innovations, privacy concerns and business model. He uses these four books as sources along
with his own experience and well founded sources. Addressing this critique to a general
audience, he talks about how the company has radically transformed the information economy,
and claims that Googles merchandise is not information but our attention. The main focus of our
team is a rhetorical analysis of Gleicks review relying on the use of three rhetorical devices:
Logical Fallacies or Logos, Ethos and Pathos.
Starting with the first rhetorical device, Logos, a word of Greek origin meaning Logic
which can be defined as a statement, sentence, or argument that is used to convince or persuade
someone by employing reason or rationale.
James Gleick has to use logic to persuade us of his view point that Google controls our
life. Not necessarily literally, but in the idea that when there is an opportunity to use Google,

more times than not we do, also the fact that it has changed our lifestyle drastically and made
things easier for the better and worse.
The author gives numerous examples of how we use it today, from using it to look up
something at the dinner table, to looking up ways to buy certain things. Essentially he uses
examples that virtually everyone can relate to on a daily basis in order to make everything more
logically sound.
Lastly he uses the idea of how Google has created something called Google Instant to
pre-determine what you are going to type based on your previous history as well as the most
searched things in the world. This idea is great for saving time but it can be argued that it invades
our privacy by saving everything we look up or do on Google and uses it to predict what we
want.

One more way in which this article must be critically viewed is through the use of Ethos.
Ethos is a Greek word meaning character. In order to find the author trustworthy and credible,
the character of his work must be examined. On his review, James Gleick certainly provides
evidence that it does just that. He includes statistics about Google, testimonies from former
Google employees, and excerpts from publications by media scholars, technology writers, and
even an analyst who testified before the United States Congress about Google. Gleick himself is
a Harvard University graduate who wrote for The New York Times. Two of his books are
international bestsellers and one of them was awarded both the Royal Society Winton Prize for
Science Books and the PEN/E O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

A strong example of how Gleick uses his sources well can be found in an excerpt he
includes from In the Plex by Steven Levy. Levy is the former senior writer for Wired magazine
and prior to that he was chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. Levy is
currently editor in chief of the tech hub for Medium. In his book, Levy quotes Google founder
Larry Page in a 2004 interview about their hopes for the company as saying, Eventually youll
have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer. By looking at
the rest of the surrounding text that Gleick includes, it is clear that he did not take this quote out
of context. An additional quote by Google founder Sergey Brin is added, Ultimately I view
Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world. The idea that Google
dominates us and that it is their intent to do so is therefore not unfounded.

Statistics are another way of showing that what the author says is trustworthy. Gleick
says that In 2004, Google was still a privately owned company, five years old, and already
worth $25 billion, and handling about 85 percent of Internet searches. Google, while still a
child was already dominating its field. When this article was written in 2011, Gleick included
that More than 96 percent of its $29 billion in revenue last year came directly from
advertisingGoogle makes more from advertising than all the nations newspapers combined.
In this same paragraph he uses a quote from Siva Vaidhyanathan who is a media scholar at the
University of Virginia, We are not Googles customers: we are its product. We- our fancies,
fetishes, predilections, and preferences- are what Google sells to advertisers.

Gleick builds a common ground with his audience at the start of his article, and also
finishes with it. He quotes philosopher Alain de Botton The logical conclusion of our
relationship to computers: expectantly to type what is the meaning of my life into Google. In
his closing statements he quotes Vaidhyanathan again I cant give Google three of my privacy
points in exchange for 10 percent better service. And yet, Gleick contests this with the final
sentences of the article saying, We get better search results and we see more appropriate
advertising when we let Google know who we are. And we save a few keystrokes.

One more rhetorical device that is of most importance to base our review is Pathos.
Pathos is another word of Greek origin that defines a quality which evokes pity or sadness.
Pathos in rhetoric represents an appeal to the emotions of the audience.

Gleick for most part keeps the review neutral to certain degree but does try to appeal the
audience by building common ground. He sides with the audience as another spectator in the
Google play. He concludes in the same way by getting the audience intrigued in the facts. The
author even used a closing line with a touch of sarcasm that could be for the readers delight.

One of he most notorious examples of Gleick using Pathos to influence his audience can
be seen on a couple of topics in the review, like the cited quote Its for your own good which is
Googles cherished belief. He claims that according to this belief, if we want the best possible

results, and if we want advertisements suited to our needs and desires, we must let them into our
souls.
Another example comes after he quotes Googles motto Dont be evil which was
coined in 2001 by engineer Paul Buchheit at one session about corporate values. According to
Gleick the motto is controversial, mainly because at the time of its inception Googlers
understood Dont be Evil explicitly to mean Dont be like Microsoft, i.e., dont be a ruthless,
take no prisoners monopolist.

The author then continues on how Google is mocked for the motto nowadays. After going
deeper on the evil subject citing sources and research, he questions the audience if Is Google
Evil?

CONCLUSION
After filtering James Gleick review through the rhetorical devices Logos, Ethos and
Pathos, we conclude that he does a fairly neutral review of Google and its dominance over the
world.

He chose not to get tangled with logical fallacies, but instead used well founded
sources to strengthen his thoughts on the subject. The ethos on his writing can be corroborated by
the well use of sources and cites from the four books in his review, enhancing the audience
credibility on his topic.

The fair use of pathos to evoke feelings in his audience is seen through the text as a
tool to get the readers involved in the debate, without overwhelming them with unnecessary bias
and judgment.

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