technoculture203-09

After watching the video from Switched questioning Google exec Marissa Mayer. I got to wondering if there isn’t a bit of a rebellion going down in terms of how much trust we put in Google. I saw this article a little while ago talking about Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ increasing search share in both the United States and around the world. I wondered what exactly triggered this. Perhaps it is a change in how Google is perceived by the General public. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a bit of a Geek when it comes to this sort of stuff, so feel free to disagree with me in the comments, if you don’t think Google’s image has taken a bit of a bashing recently. It was like Luke said. There was a time when I and others thought of Google as a bunch of hip'ish nerds in San Francisco in stylish offices designing cool logos and eating organic food on Swiss balls.

In more recent times, my perceptions have sort of changed. It started with weird little things like when Google management started charging staff for lunch and ripping employees for childcare services. This tiny stuff began to feel a bit like something we would see from any publicly listed profit-obsessed corporate. There were other things too. When I was in Europe a little while ago, I came across a Google data centre, where the company houses its servers and routing equipment. It was nothing like the offices we see on the front of Time Magazine, or even the Logo on the Google homepage. I don’t know where I thought they stored all this data, but when it’s put right in front of you, it really seemed to bring it back into focus. Add to this the Google brain drain, with loads of employees jumping ship, even in an economy this bad, it sort of makes me wonder, Is Google changing, and do we care? Or is Microsoft just finally making an impact in search with Bing?

nsIt was quite interesting to learn in today’s lecture how Google has become a “Corporate Power”. Google has grown immensely since its birth in 1996 as a research project. To this date, Google has become the default search engine, image finder, email client, map locator and news source for some people. Think….. How many times have you heard someone say to you “I’ll Google it”? I have yet to hear someone say “I’ll Yahoo! it”.

I believe that Google’s image will grow bigger and bigger as the years go on due to its dominance in the internet world. Even Apple’s iPod Touch is helping to spread Google’s image and services to become the internet superpower is it currently known as. The Apple iPod touch comes with Google Maps and Youtube applications. Both applications are owned and operated by Google. In addition, the Google mobile search page was the default homepage when I first logged onto the internet from my iPod Touch.

It seems that our internet worlds are run by Google. It now seems that there is even a Google Phone, which is said to rival the iPhone, oddly enough. Who knows what Google may attempt to do next. They might even branch into becoming an internet service provider or even launch their own operating system to challenge Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and Apple’s MAC operating systems. I guess we will have to wait and see what Google’s future holds.

Technology Review weighs up the strengths and limitations of the new search technology hyped as sounding the death knell for Google et al (it's some way off that yet, is the verdict).