Ode to Google
Google just keeps getting bigger and bigger. They should be moving into evil corporation territory, yet with the imminent release of Google Wave, I still can’t help but love them. Here are five reasons why:
1. (Almost) everything is free.
Wired.com calls it “freeconomics”, Microsoft calls it “Holy $#&%! What are we going to do?????”. From Gmail, to Google Analytics; Google Docs, to Google Earth – it won’t cost you a cent. The user (you) is happy: you get to use a great application for nothing. Google is happy: they make money through advertising spend. The industry is happy: competition is accelerated.
2. It changes its logo just to amuse me.
As I type this, Google has changed its logo to resemble Tetris bricks. Google loves to change its logo to commemorate holidays and events, and has celebrated everything from public holidays, to “National Teacher Day”, to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. And what’s better than the five-day Dilbert/Google logo?
3. It does things I never knew I needed in a search engine.
For example:
• It’s a dictionary. Try typing “define word” into the search bar
• It’s a thesaurus. Type “~word” into the search bar
• It’s the weather channel. Type “weather city” into the search bar to get a four-day forecast
• It’s a world clock. Type “time city” into the search bar
• It’s a calculator. Try typing a maths equation into Google and hitting Enter, e.g. 14*2; 2^3 (2 to the power of 3), 80% of 700.
• It’s a conversion tool. If you type “30GBP into AUD”, Google will convert 30 Pounds Sterling into Australian dollars. The same goes for length (try “40 inches into cm”), temperature (“350F into C) and almost any other unit of measurement.
• It’s a spellchekcer. Did you mean “spellchecker”?
• Website tracker. If you type “info:www.example.com” into Google, you get a description of the website, you get to see the cached page, similar pages, links to pages, pages from the website and web pages that contain the searched url.
4. It’s made pages, just for me.
Mac junkies rejoice! Head to google.com/mac for your very own Google Desktop for Mac. You other people can go to google.com/microsoft
5. It’s applications rock.
• Gmail is simply the best free, webmail application. Unlimited space, no spam, chat, and the incredibly convenient conversation archiving system.
• Track your business with Google Alerts: It’s media monitoring, the Google way.
• Google Apps means you don’t have to buy Word or Excel. Create and store all your documents online, plus anyone else can edit your documents meaning group collaboration is incredibly easy. You don’t have to attach documents to emails, and you can even save as PDFs.
• Google Calendar makes it easy to save your appointments and share your calendar with others.
What do you love about Google?
