Search: What is it Good for?

Questions — what are they good for? Answers — what are they good for? Talk: What is it good for?

We need to pay attention here: Does the end justify the means?

Is your end goal the same end goal as your business partner’s? If your partner’s end goal is to get you to click on a link, then you need to ask yourself: How satisfying is it for me to click on a link? If you can’t get enough satisfaction out of that transaction, then why are you doing it? Why do you consider someone whose end goal is to get you to click on a link your partner, if clicking on links doesn’t even make you happy in the short run? Do you think you will ultimately — in the long run — get more satisfaction out of it? Will you halt Global Warming? Is clicking on links a way that you hope to get into Heaven? If the answers to these questions are “no”, then maybe Google is in fact not your ideal partner.

If you have learned how to use the Internet, then all you need to succeed is to realize that the World Wide Web is all about disintermediation: there is no need to learn how to speak English if you already know how to speak it. Since more and more people know how to speak English, the question “do you speak English?” is becoming more and more superfluous. You can simply assume that others know how to speak the same language as you — although you may be wrong occasionally, you will usually be right… and you will know for certain within a matter of seconds.

Let me use a concrete example: When you visit books.com, then your partner at books.com will present you a commercial website which has this end goal: trading books. If you don’t want to trade books, then don’t visit books.com. If you don’t want to visit a commercial website, then don’t visit a .com address (but in that case, you are advised to be very careful — because there are many people out there whose end goal is nothing more than to take as much cash out of your pocket as possible without providing anything in return for it; Historically, the reason why .com addresses were developed first is simple: commercial businesses were the first to expand their business activity into incorporating use of the world-wide web). The meaning / significance of domain names (and in particular: top-level domains) is still not very well understood by many on a conscious level, but most people do have an intuitive understanding that is by and large based on the Wisdom of the Language.