Dirty Cal Student: Google still rocks my world

I feel there’s too much hate surrounding our good friend Google these days. In my mind, it seems Google has been portrayed as an ogre-like enemy, deserving of spite. Perhaps this feeling is a product of the Silicon Valley psyche, which champions the small start-up over the powerful giant. But only the best companies survive the fiercely competitive online world. The fact that so many consumers use Google should point to its popularity in the hearts and minds of consumers. Right?

I think the problem is that Google is too good, and our expectations have been raised. Google-like proficiency in Web search, for example, is the standard, and most people are now indifferent about their Google experience. Hell, we’ve even turned the word Google into a generic verb describing web search (to the consternation of Google, which could actually lose the trademark on their name if this pervades society too deeply). So the only thing that really makes news these days are vaguely-articulated concerns about privacy, perpetuated by companies’ lobbying arms (as recently reported in The New Yorker), or speculation over whether the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! could successfully battle Google.

I’d like to shift the focus to the fact that Google has been rocking our world for some time now, and continues to do so. Does anyone even remember Web search before Google? The experience was painful, slow and inaccurate. The improvement Google has contributed has probably contributed untold billions to our economy via labor saved in finding information and the economic benefit that greater access to information endows. Now you can find nearly anything in record time — which could also be to your detriment if you have something to hide.

Google has also shaken up the email scene in the same way it did to Web search. Again, think back to email before Gmail: You were maxed out at 100 MB of storage space, search features sucked, and the whole process felt like a chore. Gmail, by correcting many of those sore points, has made email as addicting and as pain-free as possible. This beneficial effect even extended to non-Gmail users, as competitive email services such as Yahoo! improved their offerings in response to the introduction of Gmail.

There are even more godsends from the Google team. If you have used Google Scholar, Google Patent Search or even Google Image, then you’ll be just as devout a follower of Google as I am. I owe entire research projects to Google Scholar for being able to find the academic articles that I needed. Google Scholar is light-years ahead of any other academic publication search, and if it weren’t for Google Scholar, academic research would be significantly more painful. Patent and image searches have been similarly transformed.

It might seem odd that mighty Google needs defense. However, because Google has delivered so many positive changes to the world, I feel that Google deserve more accolades than it currently receives. As I said, we’ve grown complacent with the pleasant online experience that Google has provided, and when problems disappear, we take our benefactors for granted.

There is nothing dishonorable, however, with dishing out criticism to Google and defecting to other companies if Google ends up losing its luster. Moving on to the next best thing is what makes our economy great, and it’s this phenomenon that leads to the creation of great companies like Google. The risk of this happening to Google anytime soon is minimal — if anything, Google will only end up becoming more powerful. And if it does end up engaging in monopolistic behavior, then we should be concerned. But you know what? I think life under a Google monopoly would be pretty comfortable. It would be a society pervaded with free, innovative and well-designed products. Sounds all right to me...