Google rules the world
I have previously received some mail chiding me for my comment about Google’s attempt, in my opinion, to take over the world.
I meant the comment facetiously of course but the company really is firing on all cylinders when it comes to Internet “coolness,” products, ubiquity and stock price. I strongly admire the company’s resistance to plaster the company’s home page with ads and ruin the experience. (Compare Google’s home page with that of Yahoo or Netscape for example.)
Some people are worried about some of its products, including Desktop Search, which possibly could expose some personal information if used in certain ways, but overall the company is retaining most of the cache it had when it first launched and news of the plain web site with the funny name trickled out onto the Web.
Since then it has become the most important search site on the entire Web and revolutionized free email by offering every user up to a gig of email space, about 10 times what most competitors were offering.
Anyway, the company appears to be preparing to launch a personalized version of Google that will remember your searches, offer the status of your Gmail and more.) How would I know this? My vast network of spies?
No, actually Google is among the most transparent companies on the Internet with what it is working on. If you head to Google’s Lab (labs.google.com) you will see lots of very cool ideas.
Not only is there desktop search on the horizon, if I lived in a city I would be pretty happy with Google Ride Finder, which monitors the position of taxicabs via global positioning systems. (Of course, not every taxi is in the system but it is way-cool idea if it could be ported to a wireless device…imagine needing a cab and firing up a handheld and seeing where every available taxi is… or even hailing a cab by automatically dispatching the closest one to your location.)
The Web Acceleration technology has promise but some kinks to be worked out. As previously reported some users were reporting some privacy concerns and some problems working with some applications such as Firefox. I think acceleration technology is very promising but as the Lab site says, the application is not yet ready for prime-time.
Google Video, another product under development, searches the closed-captioning streams from television programs and makes them searchable. Eventually it hopes to have the rights to the actual video associated with the found text but as it stands (and as far as it goes) it is pretty cool. If you want to know anytime on any program that “Ernie Banks” was mentioned on television in the last 7 days, this type of application could tell you that, then show you the clip.
Like everything else there are rights issues that will take years to work out.
Anyway, take a look around the Google Laboratory and see what you like. There’s a feedback link once you have used the products (or, if you never want to, why you would not.) I at least get the impression the company is listening.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Want to search the web for pictures? Google’s Image search is first-rate. Head to images.google.com
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