To Google, or not to Google

Everyone that has ever been online knows Google. Google has become so big that it is not just a search engine and a corporation, but a verb. People don´t say look it up on the web, but Google it. So I ask the question: to Google, or not to Google? That is the question. 

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on September 7th 1998. The two students from Stanford University started Google with just 100,000 dollars. And over the past 10 years they have built it in to a multi billion dollar corporation. August 19th Google went on the stock exchange, making it worth 23 billion dollars. Today it is worth an outstanding 179,07 billion US dollars.

So how does Google make money? It sell advertisements associated with search keywords. Say for example you type in the word car, it will find links for you. If you look to right after you have done a search you will see the payed links, or ads. But Google doesn´t just make money with these links, Google owns many other internet sites and applications. Google make money from normal ads here as well. 

So which web sites and services does Google own/provide?

Here is a list on most of them:

• www.Google.com          Google´s search engine. 

• Google News          Automated news aggregator

• Google Product Search          Price comparison service

• Google Groups          Discussion website

• Google Spreadsheets          Web-based word processor

• Google Maps          Offers street maps, a route planner

• Gmail          E-mail service 

• Google Video          It´s own version of Youtube

• Google Sites wiki          Helps small-businesses have their own website

• Google Desktop          A desktop search for your own computer

• Google.org          Charitable arm of the Google´s search engine

• Picasa          Software app. for organizing and editing digital photos

• Orkut          Social network service

• Google Earth          Virtual globe, uses satellite imagery, aerial photography                                       and GIS 3D 

• Google Moon          Shows satellite images of the Moon

• Google Mars          Shows pictures of Mars

• Google Labs          Shows Google´s up and coming projects

• Google Checkout          Online payment processing service

• Google Book Search          Search engine for books that Google are scanning

• Knol          Described as a complement to Wikipedia

• SketchUP          3D modeling program

• Youtube          Google bought YouTube for 1,65 billion in 2006.

• Google China          Google´s search engine for Chinese users

• Google Chrome          Open source web browser

Even though Google has all these sites/services it is still primarily a search engine. And is the biggest of all search engines.

Here is Google market share:

• Worldwide              59,7%
• USA                        42%
• UK                          75%
• Australia                80%
• Belgium                 85%
• France                    85%
• The Netherlands    91%
• Germany                91%
• Spain                     99% 

Is Google to big for it´s own good? Do we want a monopoly on internet searches? Do we want one search engine to tell us what is relevant to our searches? If Google wanted to keep some information from us they could. I doubt they will ever do that to us, but that is exactly what they are doing to the Chinese. Google China was invented for the Chines people. The Chinese government keeps a tight rein on the internet. And control what the Chinese people can and can not access. For Google to get greater access to the Chinese market they had to agree to some cencorship. Google has come under criticism for censoring its search services in China. This what the BBC had to say: Google censors itself for China.  Here is some more info: wikipedia, google china.

This is Google´s response to the the criticism: While removing search results is inconsistent with Google´s mission, providing no information… is more inconsistent with our mission.      Every single search on Google gets recorded, every keyword saved. Google say they do this so that the can provide the Did you mean: ….. feature. When you type in a keyword, and change it so that it is spelt write Google remembers it for next time. These records of typed keywords are saved in a huge database indefinitely. Do you want Google to keep a record of all your searches? Some people say that each IP address has a database with the search keywords from that computer. I that is true i don´t know, but i it is true it´s not good news. 

So how does the search engine work? Well, when you type in your keyword its find web pages that have that word in them. After it has found them it has to rank them. The pages are ordered by what the search engine thinks is most relevant. But how does it think?. The entire Google search engine is basically just a bunch of algorithms. Mathematics put in a sequence to make instructions. For example, when ranking the algorithms look at how many ingoing links every page has. The more incoming links a page has there more relevant i becomes. But i doesn´t stop there. The incoming links to the incoming are also counted. This goes on and on. Thats the simple version.

Did you mean: …….   Is something that often pops up when using Google. It is a kind of spelling corrector. On online dictionary. Lets says you spell your keyword wrong, Google comes up with it believes you are looking for. This is a very helpful service that Google provides. I used it many times myself while writing this post. But have you ever wounded how the search engine knows what you meant?Do you have Gmail? If you do, did you know that Google copies all of you e-mails. Google´s privacy policy says; residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems in perpetuity. Read this link: Google subpoenaed to turn over deleted Gmail messages

Google has lots of info. on its users. Maybe to much. They say they don´t misuse this info. I personally don´t think they are misusing it, but just the storage of info may temp third parties to get hold of this info. Some years back the US government asked Google to hand over keyword search info. Google denied to do so. Here they stood up for their users wrights, and I hope they will do so in the future also.

At the moment Google is building a large book library. It is helping many Universities and libraries to digitally copy there books. The idea is to make as many books a possibly available online. This is a very good thing. But what if one corporation gets hold of most of the world book online. And then starts to charge people to view them. It´s not just Google doing this, many other companies and non profit org. are digitalising books. The worlds books are from the people. for the people. They should all come together to make a digital world library online. 

Google Earth is a very cool service. You can move around the whole world, and look at what you want. But as all technology this has also been abused. You can see in people gardens, and some people have taken advantage of this.  

Google Earth Pool-Crashing Parties Latest Teen Craze.You cant blame Google for this, but do you want to let everyone look at your properties?

This week Google launch there newest branch on the Google tree, Google Chrome. Just on day after its launch, Google´s web browser had 1% on the market. That is amazing in just one day, this shows Google power. Google tok én prosent på ett døgn.

Well there are my thoughts on Google. I would just like to say, that I an not picking on Google. I use Google on a daily basis, it´s search engine, Google Earth and SketchUp. Google is a very innovative company, and come up with many helpful features. I´m just wondering if Google has to much power. Do we want one company having so much influence? Google hasn´t abused it´s power, yet (that we know of, not that I think they have). Google´s own corporate motto is Don´t be evil. Lets hope that is always the case.

Google has been alot in the media lately, here are some links to some news articles (norwegian news papers) on Google

Google endrer omstridt avtale

Nettgiganten runder ti år

href=”http://www.vg.no/teknologi/artikkel.php?artid=525616″>Google lanserer nettleser

href=”http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/09/04/545784.html”>Google over grensen

href=”http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/09/02/545560.html”>Her kommer Googles nettleser    

Google har 90% av det norske annonsemarkedet

Slik er Google-fremtiden

Mindre Google-overvåking

 

Here is a documentary on Google, on Google´s own Google video: Google Documentary

If you want to know more about Google, just google it