Webupon

During the past 14 years Google has grown into the biggest and most powerful corporation in the world. Its technology and services have become essential in the lives of millions of people, emerging as a brand that has almost become synonymous with the expression “surfing the web”. Earning revenue from advertising, Google services are used every day, free of charge, by a large percentage of internet users, so much in fact, that the Google website is the most visited web page in the world1. E-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, news and streaming video are just some of the services provided by Google at no cost to the user.

Many of us see Google as the most innovative and successful company in the turn of the century, however, the rapid growth of the Google brand, as well as the widespread use of its services has enabled this corporation to lodge itself into everyday life.  This quickly transformed Google services into a necessity for ‘Joe Internet User’ and a ritual for ‘Jack Web Surfer’.  In this sense, Google should no longer be viewed as ‘just a company’ but something much more.  

According to PhD in psychology and author Carole Wade, a cult exhibits the five characteristics. First, a cult will place people in physically or emotionally distressing situations. Second, cults often reduce problems to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized. Third, the followers of the cult receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader. Fourth, followers will be assigned a new identity based on the group they belong to and their status in their group. Finally, followers are subject to entrapment, this means they are isolated from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture, furthermore and their access to information is severely controlled or limited2. In the strictest sense, Google displays each and every one of these characteristics, crossing the boundary between business organizations and profitable sect. 

Being all too familiar with the stress of an unresolved problem, people can often empathize with ‘Googling for resolution’ only to find themselves at the same place where they started. This case exemplifies the first characteristic of a cult, in which an individual is placed in a physically or emotionally distressing situation so the cult can provide the needed comfort. The oracle of Google is place for answers, but while the legendary Delphic Oracle only offered a single puzzling prophecy to the dismayed pilgrim, Google offers an infinite amount of answers, which can be just as perplexing.  The end-user is put in a situation where they are overwhelmed with information, most likely feeling lost and anxious. One search might lead to another, a link might be broken or you might just not get the web page you were looking but instead you were redirected by the unknown website (Google doesn’t have any pop-ups) to a page that informs you that you’ve just won a brand new ipod (which is great, but unrelated to your search and a distraction to your quest for answers). Despite the obstacles, all-mighty Google is always there to guide the user in finding life’s answers. Effectively, cults relief the distress they’ve created to emerge as ‘saviors’.

With Google the question is not whether you can find answers, but rather if you’re feeling lucky. Life is never simple. Cults often use the over-simplification of troubling issues to make the follower feel as if they can cope with any obstacles that life throws at them, all thanks to the guidance of the holy sect. Google does not strand far behind of this definition. One of Google’s features is that the user can be linked directly to the first website on the results page by clicking the “I’m feeling lucky” button on the Google homepage. This button “takes you straight to the most relevant website that Google found for your query. You won’t see the search results page at all, but if you did, the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ site would be listed on top”.  Google eliminates all those other search results and it selects the one it deems best for you. Google’s skillfulness in the simplification of information is so great that it even has a simple answer for the deepest philosophical questions ever pondered by man.  Google will give you a direct answer to The Ultimate Question, known to many as the “Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything”.  By typing in the previous phrase into Google’s search field, the answer 42 will appear in Google’s calculator function. Who would have thought that the answer to life is 42? Clearly, this is an allusion to Douglas Adams’ novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, in which the computer Deep Thought, is built for the purpose of discovering the answer to the Ultimate Question. Unlike Google, It takes Deep Thought seven and a half million years to compute and check the answer. Unfortunately, by the time Deep thought comes up with an answer The Ultimate Question itself is unknown.

There is an undeniable “cool-factor” to  Google; maybe it’s the minimalist user interface or even the integration of its services to everyday life, no one knows what makes Google so popular; one thing is for certain, the “cool-factor” has coaxed users into seeking the favor of the all-mighty and all-loving Google. Cults offer unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader to followers to fill a void worshipper’s life. The void can be anything imaginable. The follower might have not received the benefit of having a loving family. A cult would fill that void by becoming the loving social organization that the worshipper has always longed for. The worshipper might have been unfortunate enough to have never found a soul-mate, some one who shares the same values. A cult would provide the social setting for individuals of the opposite sex (or the same sex, Google is an opponent of proposition to meet in the sake of romance. The sect will unconditionally meet the necessities of the individual, and in return the individual will become an adherent disciple of the group. Google fulfills the needs of its users, no matter how bizarre. Google clearly states its objective to build the most faithful following on the internet in its Corporate Information, under a document appropriately named “Our Philosophy”. The document states “By always placing the interest of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web” 4. This statement might seem normal compared to other mission statements from other companies, however, the fact that the overall document uses a pious tone using words and phrases like “temptation”, “the perfect search engine”, “sacrifices”,  and  “evil” suggest that Google is in fact a philosophy; it is a way of life. The document itself is reminiscent of the Ten-Commandments listing in numerical format “Ten things Google has found to be true”.

Google is a culture, and like any culture its members are subject to labels both from the internal structure of the organization and the outside world. By looking at the identities assigned to its members at an internal level we can confirm the cult status of Google. In its corporate information documents, the company often refers to its employees as Googlers4 reaffirming their devotion to the brand. Googlers devote their time to working in the Googleplex , the official name of the Google Headquarters. Much like Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca every year, and christians go to church every Sunday, Googlers make a daily pilgrimage to the Googleplex. The Google corporate culture is unlike any other. Furthermore, Google users are also called Googlers, however, the pilgrimage for these end-users involves only going to the Google home page. Identities are not only assigned to users and workers, but also to web pages and organizations. Gooogle’s trademark technology PageRank “evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them…Google is able to determine which sites have been ‘voted’ the best sources of information by those most interested in the information they offer” 6. Google will determine the place of an organization in the internet hierarchy. It will determine who you are, and how many people will get to see you. Once you are part of Google you are reborn in society.

Cults use isolation and entrapment as techniques in recruiting members. It is brainwashing technique in which people are cut off from opinions other than the cults’, making the cult the absolute authority 1. Google uses the internet as a drug that leads to more and more exciting content which alters your senses. The addiction hinders people from going engaging in social activities, considering that googling is a sacred ritual that must be performed alone because of the limits in multiple-user computer access. Furthermore, Google is always in control of the information to which you are exposed to and part of. The company has always been scrutinized for its handle on user data, keeping user information indefinitely (keeping track of all your sins) and recording anything it can: preferences, recent searches, most visited web site and a history of all the searches you’ve ever done in your life through Google7.

Google is not only the most profitable business of this past decade it is also one of the sects with most followers, with numbers in the millions. The growth of the company has transformed what as once a small dorm-room based company into a corporate deity, which should be carefully watched to avoid the dangers of having a monopoly involved in every aspect of people’s lives.

References

1Batelle, John. 2005 August. The Birth of Google. Wired Magazine. <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html> Accessed 2008     Nov 7.

2Wade, Carole. 1997. Psychology. Longman Publishers. Pg 679-680.

3Time.com. Time Magazine. Image <http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/2006/1101060220_400.jpg>

4Google Inc. 2008. The Google Culture. Google Corporate Information Page. <http://www.google.com/corporate/culture.html>. Accessed 2008 Nov 7.

5OpenID. 2008. OpenID. OpenID Homepage. . Accessed 2008 Nov 7.

6Google Inc. 2008. Technology Overview. Google corporate Information Page. <http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html>. Accessed 2008 Nov 7.

7 Time.com. 2006 Feb 20. Time Magazine. Vol. 167 No.8  Cover Story. 

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