Google is one of the many parts of this day and age making our lives easier, interesting and entertaining. In a way, Google runs our lives. Need a phone number for the closest takeout? Google it. Need to have a survey completed? Use Google forms. Want to know how many chicken nuggets are eaten by the average college student? Of course, Google has the answer you’re looking for.
Google is innovative, convenient, and even evolutionary. Yet I would venture to say in some regards, Google is too far into our personal business. Google controls Gmail, the most used emailing system in the world. Gmail surpassed Hotmail in users back in 2012 (Hotmail was the leader previously) and now has over 500 million users and counting.
Then, of course, there’s Google Chrome. Do I use it? Of course! I prefer it to other web browsers. And what about Google Drive? And even Google Play? Who knows what Google does with the information they can/have gathered about each of us.
Now am I saying Google is bad? Of course not. I love using Google in all its glory to help me get through my day. I just haven’t realized until recently how much of my life is stored through and controlled by Google. It’s interesting to take a step back and look at how much of your time is spent with one company. What’s more interesting (at least to me) is what Google has been able to accomplish in their short 18 years of existence.
Thanks to Google, things like phone books and paper maps are nearly obsolete. If you lost the instructions to your game, just Google it. In such a technologically advanced age, it’s crazy how much we depend on a simple Google search to solve all of our problems. When we get sick, we ask Google what we have (which typically results in something deadly). When our children won’t stop crying, we ask Google what the signs of Colic are. When we can’t figure out the answer to a math problem, we ask Google to solve it for us. What if Google shut down? Even just for a day! Confusion would most certainly hit the globe.
I love Google, though. I use it on a daily basis and am probably (mostly) better off for it. Google is going to be around for a while, so I guess we all just have to get used to that. And when another company swings in and beats them out, well, that will be the day.
But for now, thanks, Google. Thanks for making our lives more entertaining, more interesting and certainly easier.
