f l u e n c y f u m b l e

Snyder’s Chapter 5, “Searching for Truth,” involves an explanation of the way information is organized and stored on the ‘net. After last week’s 90-minute in-class group presentation, I would wager there can’t be much of Google.com that we haven’t seen. However, the Internet giant hosts enough apps to keep a procrastinating amateur techblogger occupied for days.

At some point during the last five years, Google emerged from a pack of search engines that were once regarded as equal competitors. Dogpile, AskJeeves, Yahoo and most of the others still exist, but their daily hit counts are meager compared to Google’s share (last I checked, second only to myspace.com as the most popular site on the Web). Snyder’s chapter goes to show why: Excluding Google’s business prowess and unparalleled creativity in service provision, it has been quite the pioneer of Internet search as we know it, introducing PageRank and keyword-anchor reference to produce more accurate search results.

Perhaps the most useful Google app by far, for the kind of prying, stalkerish visual mind that enjoys this kind of thing, is Google Earth: “a 3D interface to the planet.” Where else can I zoom in to view a neighbor’s yard, check out the foliage along southern Germany’s Rhine river or see what Iraq looked like three years ago? Sure, most of Google Earth’s images are nondescript photos of pixelated deserts and blocky-looking fields. However, the occasional remarkable find justifies hours of scrolling through blurry images of other people’s neighborhoods.

Here’s my all-time favorite, Flying Car:

It’s in Perth, Australia. Flying Car has its naysayers, who maintain that the obvious shadow of Flying Car is actually a black car parked parallel to the car in question. Commenters on the Google Earth blog speculate that it is perhaps a car-shaped balloon, or maybe a car-shaped shed. They are obviously grasping at straws to disparage the irrefutable photographic evidence of Flying Car that Google Earth has unwittingly provided in this snapshot.

Obviously.

Other valuable GE finds include a capsized cruise ship, a bomber in mid-air, crop circles and African animals in high-res. These were collected by some blogger and can be viewed through links on his site.

Think of it this way — 10 years ago, what are the chances that I could have located a photo of a parking lot in Perth?

Google’s Google Earth app, along with the tens of other apps brought up during the presentation, is a relatively recent addition to the blinding array of information options available to anyone with Internet access. Google’s most popular new features seem to be the applications that truly innovate the way information is published, organized and reviewed — therefore, the Internet giant stands out from its competitors as not only a market-share lion, but often also as the inventor that constantly shapes and frames the way we collect and understand data.