Ten years ago today, Google was incorporated as a company. At the time, it didn't appear to have much for assets: a $100,000 bank account, four computers, and the ingenuity of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. However, since then, Google has gone into the history books as being the fastest growing company in history (taking in $20 billion in revenue this year).
Google's search engine has always been the core product for the company, but as any computer geeks know, Google has expanded into many other niches – Adwords/Adsense advertising, GIS offerings with Google Earth and Google Maps, the purchase of YouTube, free Gmail email accounts for the world, and hundreds of other examples. In fact, Google has become so ubiquitous that it has become the de facto standard for people trying to check if their internet connections are working. If Google doesn't come up, the internet must not be working.
However, it isn't what Google has accomplished in the past that is important, it's what it will accomplish in the future. Management at Google have some pretty lofty goals:
- Digitizing copies of all of the world's books.
- Further improvements to its search engine, so it can fully understand questions in "plain human language."
- Providing software to businesses over the internet.
- Fully extending their data platforms and applications to cell and other mobile devices.
- Leading the change from fossil fuel reliance to alternative energy sources (this one seems to be a bit of a tangent, but do some research, and you'll be surprised at some of the investments that Google has made).
The company is not without a sense of humour. For its IPO several years ago, it picked a seemingly random number to value as its initial float - $2,718,281,828. Wall Street scratched their heads. Geeks everywhere instantly recognized this number as "e" – the complex number that represents the natural logarithm. And if you go to the Google Pranks page on Wikipedia, you can read about a lot of their other practical jokes and April Fool's Day pranks. One of my favourites was the fake "Google Romance" application in 2006. Their splash screen introduction was a classic: "Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance." And of course, another classic joke happened on April Fool's day this year, when Google rickrolled the world.
Happy Birthday, Google! And happy birthday to my nephew, Evan, who also turned ten on Friday.
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
The "Chrome" Browser
Today, Google made another bold move in the global computing scene. Google now has a free internet browser available to the public, called “Chrome.”
Want to download it? http://www.google.com/chrome
I was kind of curious to see how they set up the browser, although I didn’t really expect that I’d want to use it in the long term. Most of the time, I use MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer. After all, I work on several different computers in various locations, and IE is pretty common for any Windows-based machine. And it gets the job done in most cases. I also use FireFox occasionally, but that’s more for when I’m downloading larger files (because of Mozilla’s download manager). I don’t really like the bookmarks layout of FireFox, compared to IE’s favorites table, otherwise I would probably use it more often than IE.
But so far, my initial impressions of Chrome have been pretty positive. First of all, downloading and installing Chrome is fast – the whole process took well under two minutes on my first machine.
Chrome also has a very simple and clean interface. There are far less visible options than in Internet Explorer or FireFox. I think that quite a few options are fairly irrelevant anyway, so keeping the screen lean and clean is probably a positive move. And of course, think of Google’s search page – a simple search box on almost empty white space. Nobody has had better success with that approach. Keep it simple.
Under the hood, Chrome’s big advantage (especially for intense users) is that it loads pages many times faster than IE or FireFox. And for someone who surfs the web constantly, that is going to make a big difference. In fact, it will make a big difference for a lot of people from business users to casual surfers, not just for the internet junkies. Google (and other companies) have done a lot of studies and it has become very clear that when pages load faster, even if it is only by milliseconds, even casual users who can’t even really notice the difference will browse more frequently. And, lest you think that Google has become completely altruistic, remember that increased browsing often leads to increased placement of Google Adwords, since they have practically taken over the internet. Google is, after all, a $150 billion company – they do make money with some of their activities. The importance of fast page-loading also applies to searching, not just browsing, so it’s no surprise that Google would put such an emphasis on making sure that its browser is blindingly fast. Oh, and by the way, for the tech-savvy readers out there, Chrome is very JavaScript friendly, just like FireFox.
Perhaps Chrome’s biggest attraction is how Google has seamlessly integrated both the URL (address) bar and the search bar into a single search box called the “omni box.” I won’t lie – I really disliked the Google Toolbar, but mostly because it took away a line of screen space when I was browsing. So I’ve always avoided that add-on like the plague. However, the whole idea of being able to do your web searches without having to go to a bookmarked page (or having to type Google into the address bar) is quite appealing. And after playing around with the functionality of the omni bar for a few minutes, it certainly seems to work.
Of course, no matter how good or bad the browser turns out in the end, there will be mixed feelings about it. Some people will use it even if it isn’t that good, because they appreciate what Google is doing to make end-users’ computing experiences better. Some people will not use Chrome no matter how good it is, because “Google is evil and taking over the world.” Chrome will probably never take over the dominant market position from MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer, but I have no doubt that it will gain a devoted following pretty quickly.
So in short, I haven’t fully road-tested Chrome out yet, but my first impressions were pretty positive. Lean, clean, fast, and robust. Give it a shot …
Want to download it? http://www.google.com/chrome
I was kind of curious to see how they set up the browser, although I didn’t really expect that I’d want to use it in the long term. Most of the time, I use MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer. After all, I work on several different computers in various locations, and IE is pretty common for any Windows-based machine. And it gets the job done in most cases. I also use FireFox occasionally, but that’s more for when I’m downloading larger files (because of Mozilla’s download manager). I don’t really like the bookmarks layout of FireFox, compared to IE’s favorites table, otherwise I would probably use it more often than IE.
But so far, my initial impressions of Chrome have been pretty positive. First of all, downloading and installing Chrome is fast – the whole process took well under two minutes on my first machine.
Chrome also has a very simple and clean interface. There are far less visible options than in Internet Explorer or FireFox. I think that quite a few options are fairly irrelevant anyway, so keeping the screen lean and clean is probably a positive move. And of course, think of Google’s search page – a simple search box on almost empty white space. Nobody has had better success with that approach. Keep it simple.
Under the hood, Chrome’s big advantage (especially for intense users) is that it loads pages many times faster than IE or FireFox. And for someone who surfs the web constantly, that is going to make a big difference. In fact, it will make a big difference for a lot of people from business users to casual surfers, not just for the internet junkies. Google (and other companies) have done a lot of studies and it has become very clear that when pages load faster, even if it is only by milliseconds, even casual users who can’t even really notice the difference will browse more frequently. And, lest you think that Google has become completely altruistic, remember that increased browsing often leads to increased placement of Google Adwords, since they have practically taken over the internet. Google is, after all, a $150 billion company – they do make money with some of their activities. The importance of fast page-loading also applies to searching, not just browsing, so it’s no surprise that Google would put such an emphasis on making sure that its browser is blindingly fast. Oh, and by the way, for the tech-savvy readers out there, Chrome is very JavaScript friendly, just like FireFox.
Perhaps Chrome’s biggest attraction is how Google has seamlessly integrated both the URL (address) bar and the search bar into a single search box called the “omni box.” I won’t lie – I really disliked the Google Toolbar, but mostly because it took away a line of screen space when I was browsing. So I’ve always avoided that add-on like the plague. However, the whole idea of being able to do your web searches without having to go to a bookmarked page (or having to type Google into the address bar) is quite appealing. And after playing around with the functionality of the omni bar for a few minutes, it certainly seems to work.
Of course, no matter how good or bad the browser turns out in the end, there will be mixed feelings about it. Some people will use it even if it isn’t that good, because they appreciate what Google is doing to make end-users’ computing experiences better. Some people will not use Chrome no matter how good it is, because “Google is evil and taking over the world.” Chrome will probably never take over the dominant market position from MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer, but I have no doubt that it will gain a devoted following pretty quickly.
So in short, I haven’t fully road-tested Chrome out yet, but my first impressions were pretty positive. Lean, clean, fast, and robust. Give it a shot …
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