A Google Life

Posted: 12.06.2005
By: Derek Coleman

Organize Your Life With Google...
Google seems to have in mind to provide you with all the tools necessary for the organization of your life! That's right, your life. Google, early on saw that it's search engine was more popular than it could ever imagine and that there was more than just the problem of finding things for people that needed to be solved and they expanded on that by adding services such as Gmail, Maps, AdSense and AdWords, and Desktop Search. These were apparently a huge hit as their shares are currently $500+ per share. For some time now they have been adding features to the search engine to identify the many categories people wanted to single out. You see this with Video, Image, Groups, News, Froogle (Shopping), Local, and various other search categories. These have become a laboratory to Google while all the time we are the guinea pigs in the largest science experiment the world has never known.

Welcome To Your New Lifestyle...
Google hasn't only provided web-based services, their software spreads to desktops to many of its users now. I mentioned the Desktop Search, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Lets see, there's the simple and functional Google Talk application for chat and voice communication, Google Earth which provides users the ability to explore the world from their PCs, and there's the Google Toolbar for making Google a part of your web browser. And with tools like Picasa, you can organize, edit, print, and share your pictures in amazing ways. Do you have a blog on Blogger? Yep, they own that too along with a way to search through the thousands if not millions of them of course. And it would seem that the big G has plans for a calendar product/service in the pipeline as well. This is pure speculation at this point and any information on the subject is sketchy at best, but it does make one think.

All Your Base Are Belong To Google?...
It would seem that Google plans to link its services in unique and interesting ways going forward. Just take a look at Google Base for example. Integration of Maps, Froogle, and Local Search. There's even ways to incorporate Google Video, Book Search, and Sitemaps. I imagine a day when they integrate Google Talk and the new Click-to-Call which allows for easy connection to the business or location you choose. With every addition of new service/product by the company, it seems they have an interesting concept of assimilation of each new idea with the ever growing Google Universe. It gives it a "gravity" like no other company I can think of. I look forward to being part of this amazing and still relatively new lifestyle that Google has begun to provide. I do see issues with the level of user adaptation the ever growing number of services, but it is interesting to see that more services such as Picasa and Blogger are being provided with a Google "transparency" to them so that people don't realize or don't care who provides the services. And so the "science project" will continue for as long as Google wishes and the results of the experiment will no doubt benefit us all in the long run. I don't mind being a laboratory test subject as long as they keep giving me what I have come to like. I mean it's not like they are providing me food and shelter. Yet.