Topic 189: On Advising the Almighty

Carol:

Search Me

In the communications business, Google is as “almighty” as it gets.   Our Daily Theme website receives inadvertent visits from people using Google’s “key word” search process.  Most of those random visitors face disappointment when they don’t find out how to avoid paying a traffic ticket in Prescott, about the life cycle of shrews, or how Elizabeth Taylor’s children are handling her death, all of which brought up our website because of matched words or phrases rather than actual content. 
 

Early version of Google server

Popping up on the first page of a Google list is important, especially if you’re a for-profit site or include advertising on your webpage.  According to my daughter the librarian, most people never move beyond the first page of a Google search even though what they really want or need may be way down the list prioritized by the Google search engine itself.  So, designing online marketing sites or advertising materials requires expertise, the advice of computer wizards who come up with the exact page design and word combinations to make optimum impact on Google’s search technology, which is called PageRank (source: Google Fun Facts). 
 

So, who advises the almighty Google? The official advisors of Google are the Board of Directors and Executive Officers of the company which became a public corporation in 2004, in an online sale of stock that made many of Google’s employees instant millionaires. Central to the mission of the company and its leadership are founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who created Google in 1998 when they were Ph.D students at Stanford University.  Current Stanford President John L Hennessey has been a board member since 2004, Princeton University President Shirley Tighman since 2005. 
 

When the company went public, Page and Brin promised investors that they would retain the original philosophy of the company, which includes among its 10 core principles “You can make money without doing evil,” “Democracy on the Web Works” and “Focus on the user and all else will follow” (source: “Our Philosophy”) These are lofty purposes that generally are reflected in Google’s business practices.
 

Google Co-Founder Larry Page

But, what happens when these values conflict with each other? On an issue like censorship, for instance, with the definitely-not-Democratic Republic of China. The original licensing agreement included abiding by Chinese laws that “filtered” (i.e. censored access to) information.  In 2009, for eight days in June clustered around the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, Google blocked all key word searches under “Tiananmen Square” by sending an error message.  Once publicity got out about the censorship practices in China, the company faced international criticism. Somebody must have been advising the almighty Google because its officers decided to automatically send users of the censored Chinese Google site to the uncensored Hong Kong search engine. In negotiations for renewal of Google’s licensing contract, the company agreed to drop the automatic redirecting and require users to click on a link to get to the uncensored sight. (source: “China renews Google License..). 
 

One of the other tenets of Google’s philosophy is “Fast is better than slow.” Although they may be speed demons in the internet business wars, I’m sure they have been advised by their Board of Directors that fast doesn’t always work in the culture wars.
 

Sources
“China renews Google license, ending standoff.” CNNMoney.com 2010.
“Google Fun Facts.”
Image of Google’s First Production Server. Wikipedia. Author: Steve Jurvetson 

Image of Larry Page, Google Founder. Author Marcin Mycielski, European Parliament 

“Our Philosophy. Ten Things We Know to be True.” Google.com
      

Megan:

I’ve offered a lot of advice to God over the years. During the height of my religious devotion, in my early-mid teens, I carried on a near constant internal monologue of unstructured and informal prayer. My journals from that time shifted from Dear Diary to Dear God (– always in letter format. Even now, I write best with a specific audience in mind, and begin many of my entries with Dear…) Anyway, I was taught in school and church that God doesn’t take specific requests, and that I should pray for the strength to accept His will. That seemed pretty specific to me. Usually, I would just let Him know what I wanted, why it made sense that I should get it, and then end with something along the lines of “whatever You think is best.” This is not unlike how I ask things of my parents.

Even though God and I don’t talk like we used to, I’m never short of suggestions in a moment of panic. Generally the requests involve the quick return of Milo after he’d run off chasing a rabbit or the safe landing of an airplane. I realize that it is not really fair to make requests of Someone for whom I do nothing in return, but rational thoughts are hard to come by when you think you’re about to die.

Even though I’m not religious anymore, I still think there is value in that constant internal monologue. Instead of calling it prayer, I think of it as a form of meditation or even positive visualization. A few years ago I read and then watched the film version of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. If you are not familiar with it, the concept is basically that positive thinking and visualization can affect the outcome of events and inspire change in one’s life. This is the sort of thing that usually makes me roll my eyes and make sarcastic and cynical jokes. But in a weird mood, I gave it a try and (because I was broke at the time) I visualized money coming to me. Over the next two days, I received several hundred dollars in the mail –a refund after being unknowingly overcharged, as well as money I was owed but had forgotten about. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I was completely freaked out and stopped doing it.

Recently, I’ve started trying positive thinking and visualization again, this time as a way to keep myself motivated in the course of my experiment in healthy living. It feels less corrupt than just sitting around wishing for money (although sometimes I do imagine an anonymous benefactor stepping in to take over the burden currently being shouldered by my not-anonymous parents). I think the reason it feels better this time is I’m visualizing the action as well as the result. After all, God helps those who help themselves.