-CHANGING LIVES -CHANGING LIVES

-MANOSIJ BASU 07010719

What Is GOOGLE?• Google is the most popular search engine on the Net at

present ; the company’s name is synonymous with internet searches.

• Google is the fastest growing company in the history of the world, its explosive growth is unmatched.

• Used by about 400 million people a month, Google has turned its student founders to multi-billionaires.

• Some even go on to say that Google is a ‘corporate revolution’, something akin to the Industrial Revolution.

Left to Right, Dr.Eric E.Schimdt , Sergey Brin And Larry Page.

The Beginning:

• Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in January 1996.

• Both were Ph.D students at Stanford University, California and started Google as a part of their research project.

• The name Google is a play on the word Googol, that stands for 10 raised to the power of hundred, indicating the mindset of the founders.

• They revolutionized Internet searches with their concept of ranking pages by analyzing relationship of pages with other similar pages on the Net.

• The real driving factor in the growth of the company, though, was its method of earning revenue through its revolutionary advertising policy.

• Recent statistics point that about 57% of the paid ad spending in the year 2007 went to Google.

How’s Google Affecting Our Culture?

• Influence on Corporate culture• Influence in everyday life.• Influence in Professional lives• Influence on English

Google :Corporate Culture• Fortune Magazine places Google first in its list

of hundred best places to work in 2007, because of its relaxed work environment.

• Google’s corporate culture embodies such casual principles such as “you can make money without doing evil” and “work should be challenging and challenges should be fun”.

• Innovation Time Off: As an interesting motivation technique, Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.

• The result of this innovative technique has been the long line of services and technologies, Google has been pouring out in the recent past, such as Gmail, Orkut and Adsense.

• Google’s corporate culture has since been aped by many institutions because of its sheer productivity and success rate.

Google In Everyday Life:• Google has changed the way computer

literate people approach their day to day work.

• Be it a chef of a five-star hotel looking for a new recipe or simply a housewife searching for a new dish, a simple Google search solves their problem.

• People afflicted with a simple cold or a major disease, nowadays search Google before paying a visit to their doctor.

• Be it the planning of a holiday, or the simply the route to one’s destination, the answer nowadays is available at the hit of a return on Google’s search bar.

• Some people Google partner’s in an online conversation just to find out his/her tastes and make the conversation worthwhile.

• Yet others have found long lost friends and relatives using Google and cannot express their gratitude in words.

• Prospective girlfriends too search their suitor’s profile, and blind dates have lost their significance. Quoting from an article published in The Chicago Tribune:“With the assistance of her high-speed Internet connection, she scans and fact-checks her suitor's resume. Her short, buffed nails pull up his credit history, mortgage schedule, publications record, professional reprimands, genealogy and horoscope.”

Google in Professional Lives:• Google is all, but throwing private detectives

or ‘gumshoes’ out of business. A simple Google search turns up more information on a persons life than a private detective can turn up in a month.

• For instance, Lucretia Marcus, a CEO in a top firm, laments that her unlisted telephone number has found its way into Google searches on her name, destroying her privacy.

• Projects for students nowadays means Google time!! Students no longer spend days in the library searching for material, a Google search returns enough to fill millions of pages.

• Interestingly, Google has helped the teaching community too, in catching hold of the numerous plagiarized projects submitted to them. A simple search of a suspicious looking phrase turns up entire articles from which the student might have copied.

• Most interviewers in top firms glean all the information of a potential candidate by googling him, and have a near-to-perfect profile of the person ready even before interviewing him.

• This e-attack on the privacy of an employee does not stop with the interview. Many employees have faced the upshot of writing their minds about their bosses on their blogs, which turn up on Google searches of their names, and ended with their termination letters as a direct consequence.

• Counter Googling: The concept of gathering information on customers practised by corporate houses and providing services according to their taste and habits.

• Example: The Bel Air Hotel in LA already Googles first-time

guests upon arrival, based on their reservation details (name and address), leading to personalized services like assigning guests a room with morning sun if Googling shows the guest enjoys jogging early in the day.

Influence of Google on English:

• The popularity of Google as a search engine has resulted in the addition of several new words to the English dictionary, most of them involving a play on the word, Google.

• a) google(v): To search for information on the Web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the Web for information regarding any possible topic using Google.

• Example:“Still a rare practice among the online masses, Googling the one you (might) love is fairly common among the young, professional and Internet-savvy. 'Everyone does it,' said Jena Fischer, 26, a Chicago advertising executive. 'And if [they say] they're not doing it, they're lying.’ “—Nara Schoenberg, "Don't Go Into Date Blind; Singles Googling Before Canoodling," Chicago Tribune, April 2, 2001

• b)Googlewhack(n): A phrase that turns up only one hit on Google. Such phrases have become increasingly rare as the search engine expands its database.

• c)Google bombing(v): Creating a large number of fake Web pages with link to a certain Web page, so that this Web page turns up at the top of a Google search.

• d)Googleability(n): The ease with which information about a certain person maybe found on Google.

• e)Googleverse(n):[blend of Google and the Universe]the range of products, services and technologies belonging to or associated with Google Inc.

Google: Demerits

• Such a powerful search engine cannot be without its own demerits.

• With the click of a mouse, parts of ones lives, including any re-invented selves are open to public scrutiny. People may locate you even if you rather not be discovered.

• One of the main laments of the critics of Google is the fact that Google scans through pages where books and other copyrighted material is available, and makes it available to the netizens.

• Also the loss of online privacy is another reason for concern among the net-savvy public.

Google maintains a profile for search history or the ‘search behavior data’ of every user, which in theory it may be asked to be supply to the US government.

Google:Changing Cultures And Lives

• I believe that Google, indeed, has had a profound influence on the everyday life of a 21st century human.

• Everything, from one’s household chores, to one’s professional work, can be done easily by the use of Google.

• In conclusion, Google has surely rewritten the modern day culture, and this fast growing giant is here to stay and change our lives.

GOOGLE USAGE CLASSIFIED INTO REGIONS

Bibliography:• Google.com• Wikipedia.org• ‘The World According To Google’ a

documentary by BBC World.• Chicago Tribune issue April 2nd,2001.• The San-Francisco Chronicle