:: Google as group mind ::

Those of you who read this space regularly know that I have a soft spot for Google. This is partly because of the fact that Google was responsible for bringing pure search back into style in the late 1990s, when it looked like the "portal" a la Yahoo and MSN would dominate everything.

The simplicity of the Google interface, coupled with its awesome power, fascinates me. As a software designer and student of human nature, I'm alternately awed, pleased and tickled at the effect Google has had as a technology, a philosophy and a pastime. Thanks to its citation analysis style method of determining rank relevance of a page to a search, based on how many other pages have linked to it, I agree that Google has evolved into the first semi-intelligent technological group mind of our times.