Pranav, my colleague at office has his blog here. His first post talks about google assimilating everything you throw at it. Read about it here.
What man cannot understand, he fears. This has been his instinctive behavious, since time eternal. Case in point: Galileo being excommunicated for suggesting that Earth was the third rock from the sun. Or something like that.
Admittedly, Google has not exactly stuck to the classical mould of a search company, and has evolved into an elaborate creature which sustains itself when people sponsor its search indexes.
Its usual plan is to develop something, throw it open to the world to play with, and when it becomes indespensable, introduces something like Ad Words to it to start a cash inflow in its accounts. From online search, it has forayed to merchant services, free (!) wireless internet, video search, web Picasa etc. etc. They have successfully managed to make themselves the top-of-the-mind product when it comes to search. Google has become a verb.
I read on the BBC that they are considering a system wherein the computer / laptop will be able to hear ambient sounds, and if a TV program is running, compare the sample sound against its database, identify the program, and immediately display relevant ads on the computer, should it be on. Phew. I think that is a little bit far fetched, even for me.
The thing is, all this information has people jumpy. Personally, I have absolutely nothing against them. After all, am I compelled to store each and every aspect of my data on a Google server? I am not. I can keep them in my head, or I can write it down, there are rival services by a whole lot of people like Yahoo, MSN and Flickr for services like emails, search and photographs. I say, so what if Google has four storey high servers in a top secret base somewhere deep inside the countryside? As long as I get my fix of a 2 Gigabyte inbox, my instant search, my personal search history, my own news hound... I am satisfied.
It did not matter when Yahoo was the dominant search engine on the block. Why should it matter when its Google's turn? Its just something hyped by Microsoft, because it feels threatened by its forays onto networked computing, which is totally contrary to its thinking of individualised computing. The other search engines feel threatened because advertisers see more value in Google rather then, say, Yahoo.
On a more abstract scale, it has just occured to me that this is even analogous to the Reservation issue in India. Here, the issue is, in a very small nutshell, that the JEE is too tough for me, so reserve seats for me based on my caste. Similiarly, here, the companies are saying that Google is too strong for me to compete against, so please break it up / make it weaker / restrict its activities so that I can hope to stand up to it. Bollocks. Improve your offering, I say, and people will flock back to you.
Over to you.
A very interesting observation, it set me thinking. So, here goes my take on the situation...Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile, You will be assimilated! The GOOGS are coming!
Remember the Borgs in Star Trek, those man-machines with a central consciousness, who aimed for universal dominance by ‘assimilation’? Well, some recent news about Google seems to remind me of just that. Google has been adding new datacenters and strangely it would rather not have the world know that a building is a datacenter! .......
What man cannot understand, he fears. This has been his instinctive behavious, since time eternal. Case in point: Galileo being excommunicated for suggesting that Earth was the third rock from the sun. Or something like that.
Admittedly, Google has not exactly stuck to the classical mould of a search company, and has evolved into an elaborate creature which sustains itself when people sponsor its search indexes.
Its usual plan is to develop something, throw it open to the world to play with, and when it becomes indespensable, introduces something like Ad Words to it to start a cash inflow in its accounts. From online search, it has forayed to merchant services, free (!) wireless internet, video search, web Picasa etc. etc. They have successfully managed to make themselves the top-of-the-mind product when it comes to search. Google has become a verb.
I read on the BBC that they are considering a system wherein the computer / laptop will be able to hear ambient sounds, and if a TV program is running, compare the sample sound against its database, identify the program, and immediately display relevant ads on the computer, should it be on. Phew. I think that is a little bit far fetched, even for me.
The thing is, all this information has people jumpy. Personally, I have absolutely nothing against them. After all, am I compelled to store each and every aspect of my data on a Google server? I am not. I can keep them in my head, or I can write it down, there are rival services by a whole lot of people like Yahoo, MSN and Flickr for services like emails, search and photographs. I say, so what if Google has four storey high servers in a top secret base somewhere deep inside the countryside? As long as I get my fix of a 2 Gigabyte inbox, my instant search, my personal search history, my own news hound... I am satisfied.
It did not matter when Yahoo was the dominant search engine on the block. Why should it matter when its Google's turn? Its just something hyped by Microsoft, because it feels threatened by its forays onto networked computing, which is totally contrary to its thinking of individualised computing. The other search engines feel threatened because advertisers see more value in Google rather then, say, Yahoo.
On a more abstract scale, it has just occured to me that this is even analogous to the Reservation issue in India. Here, the issue is, in a very small nutshell, that the JEE is too tough for me, so reserve seats for me based on my caste. Similiarly, here, the companies are saying that Google is too strong for me to compete against, so please break it up / make it weaker / restrict its activities so that I can hope to stand up to it. Bollocks. Improve your offering, I say, and people will flock back to you.
Over to you.
I totally agree.And all this while we believed that caste system prevailed in India.
Nice article... :)
Regards
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