(Not) Happy Birthday, Google

Google is nine years old today... Although there were search engines before Google came along, it's still incredible to think that it's been around less than a decade.

I won't say "Happy Birthday" because I don't actually think it's cause for celebration. It's taken under ten years for it to become an Evil Empire. It's perhaps not that Google itself is Evil but -- in its self-proclaimed bid to "organize the world's information" -- it has become so important to business, that the latter will stop at nothing to appear "first in Google", with the result that the Internet is being swamped with c..p, written for that purpose [example].

Google is also bad for English teachers and their learners. Instead of doing and creating things, you just Google them, and then steal them off of someone else.

When I was at university, we used to say that the definition of a lecture was "the process by which the lecturer's notes become the student's notes without passing through the minds of either".

The danger is that Googling your lesson plans, your images (etc) starts a similar process, if you ask me...