On Thursday, we began discussing the central role that Google plays in people's online lives. We use the company's search engine to find information for homework assignments, to check our spelling, to check our symptoms when we're feeling sick, to find directions while we're on road trips and to research and apply for jobs. We use their video sharing service YouTube to fritter away hours watching videos of cats on skateboards and mash-ups of our favorite TV shows. Some of us use Google Docs to write our papers, Google Sheets to maintain budgets and Google Calendar to organize our lives. And, whether we know it or not, Google-- or, rather, parent company Alphabet-- serves up many of the online ads we're exposed to on sites like the New York Times, CNN.com and TMZ.com. This raises a series of questions: Does Google have too much power over our lives? Are we addicted to Google? And, if so, does the Googlization of our lives endanger our privacy or our independence in important ways (as some critics suggest)? The company's original motto was "Don't be evil" (and was changed to "Do the right thing" when it reorganized as Alphabet in October 2015). But does Google/Alphabet really always do the right thing? Write a blog post-- on Blogger, another Google property-- reflecting on these questions. I look forward to reading your thoughts on the subject....
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