Posted by
Ech Kay
at
11:00 PM
Google, with its latest launch Google Chrome has leapt into the ever-raging browser war. Over the last four years Mozilla corporation's Firefox browser managed to capture a fifth of the usage share among all web browsers, second only to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Although Internet Explorer still continues to be the most widely-used browser, the latest foray by Google into the browser segment, will help the venture to tighten their grip on the WWW.
Over the years, Google has come up with really fantastic ideas and products. The Google Search Engine is widely used all across the world. I use the search engine for searching for practically anything that I want to know about..
Ctrl+T.. TAB.. *Type*.. Return.... is all that I need, to start reading abut stuff that I want to know about. The google search engine is virtually my life-line. I scoured through the browsing history on my browsers (Mozilla/ Opera/ G-Chrome) and observed that, on an average I fire a search query on google.com 30 to 35 times everyday! Be it searching for the meaning/ synonym of a new word; or info about a movie on imdb.com; or the timing of a movie show at Inox or Cinemax; or following the latest news in the blogging circles: google.com is my best companion for all these activities!
Among websites under the Google umbrella, orkut.com is my favourite online hang-out! People who know me, also know how much time I spend in orkutting. Of late, blogger.com is another site which I visit very regularly, because it hosts this blog of mine. Youtube.com is another favourite for viewing video content.
Google triggered a revolution of sorts, by providing free online storage for data. My gmail inbox presently has close to 2 GB of data & I have uploaded photos and videos amounting to more than 1 GB to my web albums. In fact, when gmail service was launched on 1st April 2004, they announced a free e-mail service with a capacity of 1 GB. A majority of the netizens took this to be an April-Fools Day joke, before they realized that Google was serious about what it declared! One GB of *free* online storage space was hard to believe just 4 years ago!
Picasa is an excellent photo editing software from Google, that provides all the features and filters required for basic graphic editing. The best part about picasa is its simple interface and its ease of use. Google Earth is another awesome piece of software that I use regularly. Who could imagine fifteen years ago that it would be possible to view any place on the earth, detailed down to the specific street and house? All this for free, on the screen of your personal computer at the mere click of a button! This *encore* has been possible, thanks to Google Earth and Google Maps.
A few months ago, when I was working on my final year project, we found it extremely convenient to use Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets to create documents pertaining to the project. Along with Docs and Spreadsheets, we used to chat with each other using Google Talk. Since we worked on Google docs, the data could be viewed and edited simultaneously by 5 of us, and we didn't need to e-mail updated versions of the file to each other repeatedly. I found this application extremely useful. In times to come, Google Office products could pose very stiff competition to the Microsoft Office suite and similar stand-alone applications.Google doesn't believe in merely quelling competition but in annihilating any hint of it. Google's business strategies have been laudable and all their efforts are planned and implemented with the sole aim of establishing a monopoly of sorts in the web-based services sector. The manner in which Google aggressively bid for, and acquired several small companies is commendable. Youtube, Blogger, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Docs etc were all acquired by Google from smaller companies. Google's primary motive behind entering into partnerships with SUN/ AOL etc was to establish a stronger platform to provide online services, and to weaken Microsoft's stranglehold on the web-solutions sector.
One of the major reason, in my opinion, for the resounding success of Google, is that all its services have been free and easily available for everyone to use.
Amidst all the pluses, what I find extremely annoying (the only minus that directly affects me) about google.com is that they surreptitiously monitor browsing habits and content usage. This data is then used to bombard the user with advertisements pertaining to the content that had been searched for. On umpteen occasions I have noticed that my spam folder in gmail has e-mails with content related to keywords that I searched for, in the immediate past. A simple way that I use, to overcome this nuisance is to regularly delete the browser cache and cookies.
All said and done, Google today defines how people use the Internet more efficiently and to their benefit. Over the years, Google has added an altogether new dimension of its own to the ever-widening world-wide-web. So to say, I'm (feeling) Lucky to be a part of this era of the Internet!! Google, I love you!
-HK
11:00 pm, 5th September '08
P.S.: This post is a part of my blog hosted on blogger.com. I accessed blogger.com from the Google Chrome browser. I used Picasa to edit the image and to upload it to my web album. And in preparing this post, I used the google.com search service 17 times!
Also read: Complete List of Google Products and Services
|
Labels:
Chrome
,
Gmail
,
Google
,
Google docs
,
Google Earth
,
Google Maps
,
gtalk
,
Mozilla
,
Opera
,
Orkut
,
picasa
,
search engine
,
youtube
3 comments:
Well... even I love Google.. for its sheer simplicity... and how they defy rules everytime...
They gave social networking and web 2.0 a new outlook.. and were swift in identifying innovative products like youtube and blogger..
their corporate practices.. recruitment, job environment... are all a class apart too...
What I love most is the simple feature of saving Gtalk chats in Gmail.. making every conversation a permanent memory..
Hail Google..!
gr8 post (as usual)!
truly,every internet user in this world owes a lot to google & all its services.
God bless GOOGLE!
hmmm....
too good post...!!
even m in luv wid google...
nd google chrome is pure fun..!!
Post a Comment