That will be .03 Cents Please!

Kevin Kelly did a nifty little bit of math and figured out the cost of a single Google search as approximately .03 cents. This means if I had to pay for my searches it would put me out almost 17 cents a month. That's figuring about 20 searches a day. Some day's I do more. Some days less. But, I don't think I ever sit down at the computer without using Google at least once.

Instant access to information has become so integrated into my life, I don't really think about it much anymore. After we set our house up for wireless, the answer to any question is only as far away as the laptop. How many of you now watch TV with the remote and Google. My household can't get through an evening of television with out pausing a show, with Tivo, and my wife or I asking:

"Where have we seen that actor before?"

"That statistic can't be right...let me check that out!"

"I loved that movie. What else has that (director/actor/writer) done?"

"Oooh that (toy/car/gadget/pizza) looks cool. Wonder if it's available near by?"

Did we ask fewer questions before search engines? Are we more curious now that this resource is available to us. Kevin Kelly says in his post:

"But what is most interesting to me, is that this huge "industry," this huge appetite, has materialized out of nowhere. If we ask 800 billion questions today and expect to get instant answers, where were those 800 billion questions 20 years ago?"

Good question. Good article at The Technium.

[Image: screenshot from www.google.com]