Google Changing Everything?

Classic Google Homepage

Google, undoubltly, is a shinning star, a best known "dictionary", instead of just being an Internet search engine. It has been identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work, and as the most powerful brand in the world (according to the Millward Brown Group).

Google carries its mission as "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" [1]. Over the past decade, Google had enhanced the ease of information-gathering, lowered research costs and made creativity effectively cheaper and easier. Today, students wait untill the last minute to Google assignments ( Oops, it sounds like it is referring at me :P). Shoppers google-ed products and prices before purchasing. One columnist suggested that Google is so vital in our lives that it's a deity of sorts, everywhere and all-knowing.

Indirectly, Google had brought us to a higher level of Information Age, where everyone not need like our grandparents, went to library or school few miles away from home to find the learning materials, journal articles, etc. Now, we just Google and wait till it pops up in front of our monitor screen. It's all at your fingertips!

Google has developed several useful applications that improves our life quality. Google Map is a map searcher that shows the road routines, building locations of your country. If you wonder how to get to your destination, probably a strange place or places you never been before, key in the address, Google Maps will tell you the destination by offers walking times, walking distances, route connection times and ride times. Google also shows actual photographs of the route that you will take and a picture of the stop I should get off at. As a Sarawakian, this helps me a lots when i was studying at Kuala Lumpur to ensure i wouldn't get lost.

Google revolutionized email with GMail. The concept behind this GMail is: NEVER DELETE ANYTHING. This concept was unheard of before GMail because none had a service that could search thousands of emails intelligently and efficently. When GMail first began the invite only beta testing in 2004 each user was give an unprecedented 1000 megabytes of storage space. No other public email server even came close to 1000 megabytes. The most popular Microsoft Hotmail offered a measly 2 megabytes and Yahoo 4 megabytes (Hansell, 2004). In addition to a rediculous amount of storage Google offered integrated services within the email client. GMail scans each message and display relevant data. If an address was included in the email GMail would automatically display a miniature map of the location and offer driving directions if the address was located in the city [2].

So far now, these are the most significant where Google changes the quality of our lifes. Even though it doesn't wholly changes everything, but it create a sequence effects and impact through our life and living environment. I believe, Google will plays a greater role in the future as well.