The internet is a vast territory that would be quite challenging to navigate without the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Life on the internet is easy with the search engine but it does not mean that the search engines do not have their shortcomings.
One of the primary benefits of search engines is that they enable us to find useful websites we might not have found otherwise. The search engines prevent the need to memorize the names of different websites that provide different kinds of information. The indexes of search engines continue to expand as new websites that are created, hence, it is not unusual for search engines to generate hundreds of thousands of results for certain keywords. Another benefit of search engines is that they frequently yield highly relevant results in response to our search queries because the search engines are learning nonstop . While the earliest search engines relied on search queries only, modern search engines offer us more options to customize our search such as specifying the time period and the form of the information (text, images, and videos etc.).
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One of the shortcomings of search engines is that not all results are high quality. There is lot of noise on the internet including useless information so there is a learning curve involved to differentiate between high quality and low quality sources . The search engines may create privacy issues as the personal data may be captured by the third parties without the knowledge of the user . The search engines also create privacy issues in other manners that may impose huge costs on innocent people such as negative but untrue information about individuals that could hurt their job prospects. Another issue with the search engines is that they may not always serve the best interests of the users such as displaying paid links before the more relevant links.
- Global SchoolNet Foundation. (n.d.). Introduction to Searching the Internet. Retrieved April 26, 2017. Web.
- University of Freiburg. (n.d.). Pros and Cons of Internet Search Engines. Retrieved April 26, 2017. Web.