Making Sense of the Internet

Technology and the amount of information available to us is growing at mind boggling rates. For example, the world currently produces something like five exabytes of data which is 37,000 times the amount of information stored in the US Library of Congress and equal to roughly 5 million terabytes. We can clearly see how much information is being thrown at us each day. According to a 2007 New York Times article, the average city dweller is exposed to over 5,000 advertisements each day...and that is just ads. Consider the many other channels of information that the average person is deluged with. The crazy thing is that most of this information is now Internet based in some form or another. The amount of information contained on the Internet is absolutely overwhelming.

Perhaps two words define the primary reason that we are able to open a web browser and even begin to make sense of vast amount of information available on the Internet: search engines. Companies like Yahoo and Google have taken the challenge to bring clarity and sensibility to the Internet allowing average, everyday people to literally have the world at their fingertips. From the original idea of the search engine, Yahoo and Google have both expanded in huge ways.

Probably the main purpose for expansion is ultimately the ability to make money through Internet advertisements. In an interview with author and columnist Kara Swisher, Terry Semel, the former CEO of Yahoo (from 2001 to 2007), compared Yahoo to a theme park, in which more people will come and stay longer if there are more and better rides and attractions to keep them there. The longer a user stays on a Yahoo or Google website, the more money these respective companies make through advertising, which commonly uses a pay-per-click advertising system.

From the start, the battle for companies like Yahoo and Google was to differentiate themselves from the millions of other web based companies that pop up like gofers, each trying to get a piece of the ever growing Internet market. They had to continually grow and innovate to keep ahead of their competition. Google itself has acquired over 75 different web based businesses in an effort continually expand and offer more to their users and clients.

Apparently, the efforts of Yahoo and Google have paid off. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, Yahoo brought in 1.6 billion dollars in revenue, while Google took in a massive 6.7 billion. Research done in the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2005 reported that American Internet users enter roughly four billion search queries on a monthly basis. To note the growth, an article published in 2009 reported that there are now roughly four billion search queries submitted every single day.

From the search engine to the many features that companies like Yahoo and Google provide, the Internet is really an incredible place!

Sources:

-Rao, Leena. Tech Crunch. http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/22/google-reigns-supreme-in-2009-worldwide-searches-but-microsoft-sees-faster-growth/. 2009.

-Rappa, Michael. http://digitalenterprise.org/navigation/nav.html. 2009

-Story, Louise. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html. 2007.

-Swisher, Kara; Yang, Jerry; Semel Terry. http://news.cnet.com/1606-2-741238.html. 2004

-Fallows, Deborah. Pew Internet and American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2005/PIP_Searchengine_users.pdf.pdf. 2005

-Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/financialHighlights?symbol=GOOG.O. 2010.

-Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/financialHighlights?symbol=YHOO.O. 2010.

-Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google. 2010