Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution.

Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,

and find links to other information related to today's conversation.

Our email address is mailadicontalk.org, we'd love to hear from you.

My guest today is Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google and a professor at the University

of California Berkeley and economics business and information management.

I want to begin with a story about my grandfather.

He spent years trying to remember who wrote the poem with the line, yet the strong man must

go.

And it really caused him a great deal of frustration that he couldn't remember who said

that and what Paul moose from.

And one night at dinner, he alarmed his guests by jumping up screaming, Robert Browning,

prosperous, because he had remembered the poet and the poem.

My father, on the other hand, unlike my grandfather, doesn't have to cope with years of frustration

like that.

If he wants to know who wrote yet the strong man must go, or if you were I want to know,

you can just Google it.

And in 0.29 seconds, less than a third of a second, the answer comes for it.

It's just one of the many ways that Google has made our lives better.

Yet, there are people who see Google as threatening.

...