Embracing your Weirdness

Google has become a synonym for success. It had grown exponentially from a garage to a googleplex in very little time. It has become a monolith, a monopoly and even a verb! Add to that it there are ever more graduates of Google labs every day. There are tools for every occasion –Maps, Calendars, E-mail (Gmail), Spreadsheets, Photo Editing tools (Picasa), Academic Service (Google Scholar) and the acclaimed Google Earth (even though it is by no means the best free map service on the Internet), and of course, Blogger. Blogger is a fairly recent acquisition, as to is YouTube . Youtube is the most likely to cause a dent in Google – it is currently subject to hundred of copyright issues over the use of protected content. But there are plenty of things that Google doesn’t own – yet – Flickr (Yahoo), Second Life (Linden Labs), and Skype to name but a high profile few.

Google has become almost all encompassing. But why are so many people opposed. Some of the best services have been those which are not subject to the forces of competition. The problem is that until there is something worse, people don’t realize what they’ve got. Think of nationalized railways – they were seen as unfair and not allowing business to flourish – and now they’re gone we are left with expensive and relatively poor services. If there was no Google, we would be at the mercy of all the small companies – think of all the flotsam and jetsam on the ‘net. Pretty good thing then that Google can be relied upon. There is an argument that the ever expanding presence of Google is taking away the ‘independence’ of the Internet. But I think that actually the Internet is plenty big enough for everyone to have say and stand a chance.

Google has made the Internet easy for people. Blogging is now easier than ever before, there is no need to buy expensive software to make things like spreadsheets and website design easy. The Picasa tool provides everything that the home user really needs from a photo suite. For the more technically minded there is now a 3D sketch tool (linked to Google maps). Google isn’t doing a bad thing by making the web more accessible to people who otherwise never would venture far online. The Internet has long been the preserve of the ‘Uber –geek’, and to be honest it’s been a bit elitist. I would consider myself a bit of a nerd, but why would I want to spend hours coding my Blog, when with Blogger’s tools, I can tweak it a little and get on with the business of writing like this. For some people it’s about all process of creating a site, but for others it’s more of a matter of what they put on it. At the end of the day for some it’s about the journey and some it’s about the destination. Google is just working to make it a little less difficult for those who are interested in the destination.

No matter all the argument and debate over the nature and purpose of Google, we are pretty much guaranteed that it is here to stay. And it’s just going to get bigger.