…to search google?

Trying to find some Linux anti-virus software (instant flame war starts among pro-Linux / pro Microsoft advocates ) and seem to be going in a loop that when I search on Google, I get taken to lots of other sites which simply say ‘Ads sponsored by Google’. What is going on? What is that all about?

For example

http://www.myzips.com/software/Protea-AntiVirus-Tools,-Avast!-version.phtml

or this one

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/2/2005/06/2

there are others…

Well, putting my orthodox marxist hat on, I would argue that this blatant commericalisation of google will be end of it as we know it. It looks like human knowledge (or at least that bit of it which is cobbled together on the web) is going to be organised not according to any known classification scheme, but on the commercial principles that dictate ‘Those with the biggest budget will have the most prominence’.

It will be a sort of ‘McDonaldisation’ of the internet; the world according to commodity manufacturers and brands. This is a new development as up until now, most of the written interpretations of the material world have produced have been the work of scholars, academics, philosophers, politicans, historians, scientists and so on. This group usually have very little money so their views are likely to be easily brushed aside by the likes of Murdoch and similar plutocrats and wealthy institutions.