Check out this cool infographic on Google.
I knew Google was an incredibly successful company, but I never took the time focus on how much power Google has. With billions of daily searches from across the globe, Google has been able to gather enormous amounts of the world’s information. With all this data, how have we come to casually trust Google? I think the first and most important factor is the idea of a free product. Google has offered its free search engine from day one. People do not have to pay anything for Google – no end of the month bill. Nothing. What we do have to pay Google with is our ‘privacy.’ And to me, that’s a fair price I am willing to pay most anytime.
Looking past the mind-blowing numbers Google cranks out and the amazing lifestyle/work style of its employees, one of the sections in Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, the I enjoyed the most was about the founders.
Auletta makes it seem that Brin and Page are ignorant when it comes to a lot of the everday practices of Google, but I find it hard to believe that two guys raised by well-educated parents and a masters from Stanford don’t know exactly what they are doing. Sure some of their beginning moves and decisions might have been risks, but I wouldn’t consider them ignorant. They knew what they were doing when they copied the entire Internet and they knew what they were doing when they started Google Books. Auletta writes about how the founders didn’t think that there was anything wrong about what they were doing when they decided to go with Google Books. I’ll stick my head out again and say that I’m pretty sure they knew that placing all those books online would be questionable and illegal.
Some people call their business practices bold and some people call their business practices arrogant. Before Google went public, people thought Brin and Page were the fearless, stick-it-to-the-man professionals, but once everyone found out how much money they were making, people started to see their strategy as arrogant. I just think they are confident. They know what they want and they go out and get it.
Google has faced and overcome most of its competitors during their reign as media royalty. Let’s look into the future. What is Google’s biggest competitor or fear? Let’s go with Facebook. Facebook doesn’t make near the amount of money Google makes, but with the number of users Facebook has, Google must keep a close eye on them. Auletta talks about how people might start to get their information and content from Facebook, cutting out Google all together. Google was a little late to jump into the social networking pool, and so far Buzz is not creating much positive buzz at all. Google will definitely have to deal with Facebook in the future, and I’m not sure how. Do they have a big enough checkbook?
