‘Googling’ is a phenomenon with which we are all familiar. Whether to settle a debate amongst friends, validate facts or just to define an unfamiliar word, it is often our first port of call. Google allows us to find an instant answer, and often it is taken as gospel; however there are disparities between the outcome and Google’s own intent. Although Google’s main function is to find answers, it is during this quest that many are misled, often by others’ bias, incorrect facts and false recounts of events.  Although this could, and in many ways is, an argument regarding the Internet as a whole, Google, for lack of better word, ‘drives’ it.

‘Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,’ in other words, theoretically make the world smaller with access to knowledge. Information, although it predominately evokes positive connotations, is an incredibly ambiguous term. Incorrect information has the ability to spread prejudices, creating a bigger social divide within different demographics and cultures: an almost polarised outcome to Google’s intent.

The spread of counterfactual information is definitely not only of this generation, however.  The Guttenberg Bible (1455) was the first major book printed in the West using movable type. It was the invention of mechanical movable type printing that led to a vast increase of publication across Europe.  Such an increase in print led to an immense amount of publications that were either factually or politically incorrect: spreading inaccuracies and falsehoods and so the same is happening again.