Googlization is a neologism that describes the perceived 'creep' of Google's search technologies and aesthetics into more and more web applications and contexts, including traditional institutions such as the library (see Google Books Library Project). The rapid rise of search media, particularly Google, is part of new media history and draws attention to issue of access and to relationships between commercial interests and media. The term Googlization should not be confused with the term Googleopoly.

Google as a corporate entity was established on September 4, 1998, by Sergey Brin and Lawrence E. Page in Menlo Park, California, United States of America. Google’s current corporate headquarters are in Mountain View, California, United States of America. In 2009, Google turned an annual profit of US $6.520 billion. In November 2006, Google acquired the popular video sharing website, YouTube for $1.65 billion. Other subsidiaries of Google include DoubleClick and GrandCentral.

For more historical, financial and social context of Googlization see History of Google.

Siva Vaidhyanathan (born June 16, 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, MSNBC.com, and Salon.com. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book.^{[citation needed]} From 2004 through 2008 he maintained a blog, Sivacracy.net, on which he frequently commented on media and technology issues, as well as his love of sports.

Vaidhyanathan was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning both a BA in History and a Ph.D. in American Studies. From 1999 through the summer of 2007 he worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University.

Eric Alterman (b. January 14, 1960) is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The Nation.

He earned a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University, an M.A. in International Relations from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University.

Alterman began his journalism career in 1983, freelancing originally for The Nation, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Harper's, Le Monde diplomatique, and later, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others, while working as a senior fellow for the World Policy Institute in New York City and Washington, DC. He published his first book, Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, which won the 1992 George Orwell Award, while studying for his doctorate in US history in Stanford in 1992. Shortly after that he became the Washington Correspondent for Mother Jones, and soon thereafter Rolling Stone, before returning to The Nation as a columnist in 1995. Alterman has also been a contributing editor to ELLE, and a regular columnist for Worth and the London Sunday Express.^{[citation needed]}

Justin Drew Bieber ( /ˈbiːbər/ BEE-bər, born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian Pop/R&B singer-songwriter, musician, and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager. Braun arranged for him to meet with Usher in Atlanta, Georgia, and Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher, and then to a recording contract with Island Records offered by L.A. Reid. Bieber's debut single, "One Time", was released in 2009 and peaked in the top twenty in Canada and charted in the top thirty in several international markets. His debut album, the seven-track EP My World, followed in November 2009, and was soon certified platinum in the United States. He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100.