Effacemygooglebookbay, the Electronic Toilet Paper

Google has long been considered an internet innovator. Why?

Soon after launching, Google became one of the most popular search engines on the internet. This is not innovation. When Google launched it was a blatant rip-off of the Yahoo! and Netscape search engines, which were the most popular at the time (there were others, but not many worth mentioning...and if I could remember their names I would "not mention" them specifically).

Later, Google created new software that kept track of what users searched for, and tracked the most popular search results. This is not innovation. Google refined "search engines" (not redefined...which reminds me, coming soon to The Caustic Dictionary: "search engine").

As time went on, Google added such features as video and image searches, which allowed users to specify the content they were seaching for (other features include: mapquest...er, sorry: Google Maps; News...not so much a feature as a competitive addition, considering Yahoo! and Netscape had News from the "get go"; and a number of others that only qualify as conveniences). This is not innovation. Videos and images were already included within normal search results. This was mere convenience: allowing users to search for only images and videos was a natural (unavoidable) evolution of search engines. Inventing the wheel is an innovation. Making the wheel out of wood rather than stone is a refinement. Making the wheel out of metal rather than wood is a necessity.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important Google "feature": context-sensitive advertisements based on search parameters. Google, a company, wants to make a profit (color me shocked: a medium blue of high saturation...no, medium blue is teased and painfully uncomfortable; color me lime green). While Google was the first to have contextual advertisements, this is hardly an innovation and by no means convenient (except to Google and its economic compatriots). It gave Google an economic edge by offering advertisers a higher probability in reaching their target markets (and a way to say "Hey you! Check this out..." to millions of people at once, which may be the one innovation Google actually made: a way to annoy millions of people simutaneously, and make a good bit of money doing so; their inspiration was Ashton Kutcher, whose inspiration was Tom Green...incidently, this is why "lime green" is the color of "shocked")

Finally, Google has begun its trek into social networking (make Orwell's 1984 dystopia attractive: "All your friends are here"..."Hmm, what about them? Who are they?"..."They are of no concern to you."). They call it "Open Social," and what a pointless trek it is. This is not an innovation. The goal is to incorporate everything you love about facebook.com into every website you can think of (minus the overwhelming majority of websites you can think of). Many are praising is as the next coming (haven't heard that before...why is the next always coming shortly after the arrived? At least religion waits a few years before announcing the coming of its next messiah), but if it is indeed a "better facebook" why hasn't anyone been able to argue the point? Saying, "Open Social is an evolution of social networking because its going to do this and this and...something else," is not an argument. It is a spineless statement of opinion.

Here: pointing out that "something" will do "this and this and this" is not a reason to say it is an evolution of anything. That type of anti-reasoning is the idiots way of pointing out what "something" is capable of, and an attempt to sound intelligent in the process (saying something is innovative or a potential evolution, and using that "something's" capabilities as justification is known as a circlular argument...and the first sign of stupidity).

Many people are saying Open Social is going to an evolution in social networking, but none have offered any reason beyond the typical "it can do this and this and...something else" answer to "why?". "You could log in at Google, then go to craigslist, and find stuff your friends, or friends of your friends, are selling," is just one more way of listing a capability. Why is this important? Screw that: why should I give half a s**t if my friend's friend is selling something (Answer: you trust your friend's friend more than you trust a stranger..."Who is that?"..."They are of no concern to you.").

Google, facebook, myspace, Ebay, and a number of other websites seem to think they are important to the future of the internet. They aren't. The concepts those websites are built around, and in some cases the ideas that were born from them, are important to the future of the internet, but the websites themselves are more disposable than toilet paper (Google has been rather absorbent).