Hard as it may be to believe the Big G turns 10 soon. Over that decade they’ve gone from being a shoestring operation in a shed to one of the most powerful corporations in the world and the most visible technology company after Microsoft.
To celebrate this anniversary, we asked around the office to find out what people made of Google’s past, present and future.
"Google has resisted the temptation to overcomplicate things and it still looks much as it did 10 years ago – still really refreshing when you look at what other online companies are serving up. That’s fed into their branding, which remains remarkably unpretentious and fun for such a major company (check out the frequent variations of their logo). And of course search has put so much information at our fingertips.
Google provide an array of statistics which help to drive your sales forward, maximising every opportunity which you didn't even realise existed
All that comes at a price though, and their size and power is threatening to take them down the same path as Microsoft – where people are starting to mistrust them. Some of their offerings, like Google Products, have a really stripped down appearance and functionality that actually takes some of the value out of the internet. There's also a lot of testing that goes unexplained – be that in AdWords, where sponsored links can appear and disappear even for big search terms, or in the endless 'beta' versions of some of its products."
"If only Google had been around 15 - 20 years ago, my education would have been so much easier. You can pretty much type anything in and Google will find you the answer. Students these days have it so bloody easy, the snivveling, soap dodging, Doc Marten wearing gits..."*
"I still remember seeing Google for the first time. I was working at a software company and it was the hardcore geeks who were using Google in those days while I, like every other sucker, was using Altavista. Trying it for the first time I was just blown away by how good the results were compared to anything else. If you were using Altavista it was already spammed to death by this time and you hardly dared click some of the links but that never seemed to happen with Google.
"It's amazing how quickly people have forgotten that at one time ‘search’ was filled with low-value crap..."
With all the hoo-hah these days about advertising models and other projects that Google has on the go, it’s amazing how quickly people have forgotten that at one time ‘search’ was filled with low-value crap. It’s largely down to Google that the web exists in the way we know it now, with search at its centre.
And then there's the genius way they've turned that into revenue. It's almost inexplicable to me now that small companies with limited budgets don't look at AdWords as their first port of call for advertising."
"I like Gmail" (thanks Mike!)
"Google Maps & Google Analytics are what I like about Google. I'm not too bothered about how big their market share is in terms of search engines, but maps & analytics are great tools which could benefit any website that's ever been put online."
"Despite most of their products being introduced as 'beta' products, Google tend to hit the nail on the head first time when they bring out a new release, even if it is in 'Beta' status for the first 2 years.
They are really in touch with the demands of web users, and get rid of all the clutter which their competitors seem to love filling their sites and applications with.
Google tend to think about what your business needs before you do. Without you realising the need for such a wealth of information, Google provide an array of statistics which help to drive your sales forward, maximising every opportunity which you didn't even realise existed."
"As an elder member of the team here and an early internet user I can just about cast my mind back to the dark days before Google. Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite etc. all looked the part but the results could only be described as dodgy at best.
Google's obviously not perfect but it's pretty good when you consider it has over 1 trillion web pages in its index and more often than not, the results you get are pretty close to what you searched for. It's free to use, doesn't have annoying expanding video ads spring up all over, doesn't ask you to register then bombard you with e-mail shots every 5 minutes and has resisted the urge to pack the home page with content you don't actually want.
It's big, powerful and dominant and needs to be careful to not abuse the power it holds over the next decade, but all things considered I think it's made a positive contribution to making the internet what it is today."
*this opinion does not necessarily reflect the official view of 9xb!
