Wednesday 1 April 2009

Youtube EDU - Google as a world saver or world rule

A few weeks ago the new gateway to lectures, campus-tours, interviews with researches of more than 100 well-known universities and colleges was set up: Youtube EDU. Until now it consists only of videos of american institutions.
As I discovered Youtube is a subsidiary of Google. It's suspect to me that the division which realized or promote it is called "Happy learning" (?!). This reminds me of motivational trainings for managers.


Google's mission is "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". This is undoubtedly a positive concern but I am not so naive to be fully convinced of Google - a profit organization - as only social-oriented. In 2003 a New York Times Columnist asked the provoking question "Is Google God?". Bill Thomson at the BBC asked "Is Google too powerful?" - a question that I also prefer. Is Google too powerful? Xiudian Dai wrote an interesting article about Google in which he sums up several fact/ reasons. First, "nation-states might see Google’s search power as a threat to their autonomy. First, the autonomy of the nation-state declines due to the
fact that Google search reinforces the trend towards economic globalisation."

- just to publish the beginning of this posting - I have to deal with the details more closely. All I can say by now: I am concerned. I will put down my concerns here in the next days. At first I have to sort my thoughts. Moreover, it will take a few time to study the details ;)
 
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