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I Google, therefore I am. But what if there were no Google? In our digitally frenzied and tech-saturated world, that question borders on a religious and philosophical query worthy of Socrates (and that guy definitely didn't have a smartphone). As a search engine and purveyor of many powerful online applications, Google is so pervasive that many of us interact with the company's products all day, every day. And even for those who only use the Web sporadically, online forays are often guided by Google's seemingly omniscient search prowess. But there are hard numbers that wouldn't exist without this Silicon Valley behemoth. Google offers a whole suite of applications (too many to list here), and a lot of them are free. You can use Gmail for e-mail, Docs for sharing all sorts of documents, Maps for navigation, Earth for geographic and topographic information (and even oceanographic maps), Calendar to organize all of your life's activities, Analytics for tracking statistics regarding your Web site and Blogger to set up a blog for both personal and professional purposes.
Groups, Finance, and many more. There's also Image search, which lets you find just about any image that's ever wound up online. And of course, there's the Google search engine, which revolutionized the way we find information on the Web. Google simply offers a lot of ways to accomplish a lot of different tasks, for not a lot of money. When Google first appeared in 1998, search engines were a matter of personal preference. Some people opted for the visually busy layout of Yahoo. Others liked Webcrawler, Altavista, Dogpile, HotBot, Ask Jeeves or Excite. But then Google arrived, with its supercharged algorithms that returned more relevant results, and suddenly, it was the fastest and easiest way to find Web-based data. Older search sites located relevant information by finding keywords on Web pages. Google, however, employed its patented PageRank system, which uses dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of criteria to sift through the Web and find the best possible source for "Santa Claus hat for dogs" or whatever else you might be attempting to locate.
There's no question that Google has delivered on many of its goals. But where, exactly, would we be without it? We'll ponder that hypothetical situation on the next page. Perhaps without the mathematical and programming wizardry of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, no other company would've developed search savvy on par with Google's. And if no one had created such a search engine, it's hard to say how profoundly different your Web experiences might be. Maybe the Web would have a much more fractured structure and be harder to navigate, with an untold number of hidden nooks and crannies accessible only to geeks with superior research skills -- in other words, the kind of people who understood how to dig past the limitations of older and more basic keyword-based search engines. Less geeky folks might rely on a site such as Yahoo as their Web portal, using its directories and browsing capabilities to guide surfing, shopping and studying. Maybe, just maybe, the constantly-connected landscape of smartphones and digital dependency wouldn't have expanded to the extent that it has.
Think about it. Google's proficiency and expertise has changed the way you interact with the world around you. Without it, you might have to remember more things, instead of pulling out your phone to Google (as a verb) the instant answer. Because if you had to fiddle with your phone for five minutes (instead of five seconds), there's a good chance you'd either give up or look elsewhere for the answer to your question. Then again, what if Google had turned into just another rank-and-file search engine that joined so many other tools in the Web’s dustbin? Perhaps without a solid marketing and business plan, another Silicon Valley duo would’ve stolen Google’s momentum and created an entirely different phenomenon. And maybe your Internet experiences would be even better than they are now. But Google is everywhere, and accessing it is easy anywhere you have Web access. On the next page, find out how Google's omnipresence changes our world. Mobile devices and business are two more examples.
When it comes to smartphones, Google has transformed this market in a major way. Without Android's spread, Apple's iPhone might still have a stranglehold on the smartphone sector. And of course, without the effectiveness of Google, ordinary students could have a lot more digging to do when it comes to research. They might spend days, not hours, researching a finals paper to make sure they found the best and most relevant sources, plundering the depths of multiple search engines (which might return all sorts of varied and inconsistent results) instead of leaning on the reliability of just one Google. They wouldn't be able to search excerpts from nearly every book ever to grace library shelves via Google Books, the most expansive digitization of books ever. Without all of those accessible-anywhere Google apps, like Calendar, Docs and Gmail, maybe the idea of storing all of your critical documents online (in "the cloud"), would still be in its infancy or reserved only for the most technically advanced users.
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