When I started blogging again it was for a few reasons.

Firstly, I like to write. It helps me refine what I think about things and motivates me to do some research to nail down my understanding and my thoughts rather than allowing fleeting inclinations to remain nebulous*.

Secondly, I like to read things I have written in the past. It’s always interesting to see how my views have changed, adapted or stayed the same over time and be reminded of the person I’ve been and the person I’m becoming.

Thirdly, I have missed thinking about and discussing the “Big Issues” and generally engaging with that kind of challenge on an intellectual level. That’s not to say that my job or my life outside work aren’t engaging or stimulating (or in fact related to a global challenge) – just that sometimes in the doing we forget to think outside of the routine. The questions of how we are all to live together on this planet without destroying ourselves – poverty, water, energy, justice, economics – and what it means for us to do so are inspiring and, in our relatively rich position in the world, questions that we have the luxury and the responsibility to engage with.

In some of those respects I feel it has been, and will continue to be, a success.

One thing I did not start blogging for was to create a page that would work its way to the top of the rankings in a search on Google for “cheese footballs” and yet in that respect, this blog has been particularly successful – number one on Google.co.uk and number two on Google.com (see for yourself…) – so now people all over the world looking for information about cheese footballs will end up here.

I’m now tempted to see what other random phrase I can acquire a top ten Google ranking for. Feel free to make a suggestion in the comments.

* Yes, I could have said “ambiguous” but I like how the word “nebulous” has a suggestion of a cloud of ideas floating around somewhere in the back of my head but never being formed into a definite, solid, coherent and self-consistent thought.

Google is odd sometimes. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I knew Christmas must be on the way because I saw Cheese Footballs in Somerfields. I tagged that post with “cheese footballs” which in WordPress (the blogging platform that makes this all work) creates a page for all posts with that tag. Nothing strange about that but I happened to take a look at the stats for this blog today and spotted that I’d had a number of visits to that very page from people who’d arrived there by searching Google for “cheese footballs”. If you go to Google right now and type in “cheese footballs”, that tag page comes up 9th in the search results! Google thinks that my blog post where I made a passing reference to those cheesy 80s party snacks is the ninth most important page about them on the internet.

The only conclusion I can draw from that is that in the Venn diagram of “things people talk about on the internet” and “cheese footballs”, the intersection of the two circles is pretty small and I’m in it. I now have a slight urge to try to become the first result on Google. This post should have helped.

For some more Venn diagram fun, head over to Indexed. It’s funnier than it sounds.

As part of their 10th birthday, it looks like Google are looking ahead to the changes that will benefit them and the rest of us in the next coming 10 years.

Two interesting things I spotted are:

1. This page of blog posts from some of the Google higher-ups about how various things on the internet and in the world might change over the next 10 years.
2. Project 10 to the 100th (= 1 googol) which is a $10 million prize fund for people with bright ideas – the winners being those whose ideas will improve the lives of the most people. Here’s the nice video Google have created to demonstrate it:

I have my worries about the power that Google have but so far (like Spiderman) they seem to have shown they understand that with it comes a responsibility to use it to help make the world better (and encourage others to do so). I hope Google will keep on Doing No Evil and, better yet, Doing Some Good.

Google Inc will hit its 10th birthday over the weekend.

As Google has climbed to its current dominant position, many have voiced concerns about just how much personal and identifiable information Google is able to collect about each one of us. It’s hard to argue that Google’s mission to organise the world’s information and the efficiency with which their search engine answers our most obscure questions are inherently bad for humanity. The concern is whether one company/entity should own and control so much information and whether that will one day lead to them owning and controlling us.

Two thoughts:

1. Who else should own/look after all this information if not Google? In an opinion poll of “Who do you trust more?” I can imagine Google coming above, for example, the US government (or indeed the UK government with it’s patchy record on keeping data secure).
   At least, as a business, Google’s motives are fairly clear – make more money.
2. If Google have all this information, isn’t it likely that other entities have it too. It’s true that Google have a lot of money but I’m sure the governments of the world have more and aren’t ignoring the goldmine of information that’s out there on the web (particularly the bits that Google won’t show you where the terrorists live).

Of course there are those conspiracy theorists that say Google and the government are one and the same!