Welcome to Google Village. With a name like this one, we know what to expect – Google, Google, and more Google. Mustering all my strength, I dive into the words, Dr. Elwyn Jenkins distributes so freely on his site – and boy, are there many.
After overcoming the first hurdle – this site does not render well in Safari – I am faced with the task of reading a lot of content. But wait, what is that? Comics! “Cool”, I think, “something to look at while I read”. But, alas, those comics are just about the unfunniest thing I’ve seen in ages. Speaking about unfunny, it’s a word. Trust me, it’s on Google, I checked.
Well. With the comic route being a no-go, I’ll have to read the texts. Now, let me let you in on a little history of mine. I actually wrote and successfully defended a doctoral thesis, and long sentences, as well as complicated conclusions are my specialty. This man, however, managed to make even me cringe in non-understanding pain. I might be completely wrong here, but Dr. Jenkins seems to be a non-native English speaker (nothing wrong here, I am neither), and some of his sentences read like those you get when you use Google Translation services.
Want a sample? Here you go:
“Google[tm] can be considered to be a text, albeit in the electronic domain, similar to a text such as a novel, an encyclopedia, or other large text. It is of the genre of large text that are constructed using a database. In the world of electronic language, there are several different types of database texts, catalogues, search engine listings, dictionaries, and flight schedules, for example. In understanding the use and application of each of these texts, we need to know a number of things about how the texts are created, how they are updated, what is contained in them, so that we might have some idea of their usefulness, application and usability for specific purposes.”
Here’s what I could glean: this website focuses on a very narrow topic, has a good deal of infatuation with the PageRank system, and seems to aim at marketers trying to understand and harness the power of Google. According to Dr. Jenkins, Google in itself is a text – not unlike prose or a good book – which can be used to reflect a large part of the web as lecture. Whow, heavy stuff, that.
Who will be profiting from Google Village? The marketer, wanting to know more about how to use and improve Google’s powers, a small number of individuals with some kind of strong attraction to Google (be it positive or negative), and Dr. Jenkins’ peers, I guess.Google Village