Your Future is in the Cloud – Maybe
A lot can be said about Google. Simple, clean interfaces. Fast, accurate results. Huge behemoth of a company. Tentacles in just about everything. There are also a lot of opinions about Google and their services but when it comes to most computer users, it’s undeniable that they have a positive reputation. It’s what I like to call “Geek Cred“.
If there is something that you need done the odds are that Google has a service for you. Lets take a look at some of these services and see just what might be in it for you. I don’t intend to get in to everything. There is just too much to talk about in one article and it’s a constantly moving target, as we just saw this week with the $750 million dollar acquisition of AdMob.
It All Starts with the Search
There is no doubt that Google dominates the search market. The fast and accurate results that you get from a Google search has set the industry standard. But search is just the end to a means. Ad revenue is where it’s all at. You don’t get a stock price of $570 without revenue. Without the search, nobody would be buying ads, and the more eyes you can get to view your ads the more money you can make. For the most part you could say that almost everything that Google puts out will drive this business model. It improves the search, drives more traffic, or increases the number of people viewing ads.
Do you use Gmail?
One of the most popular products that Google offers is Gmail. Google wasn’t the first to the table with web based email – Yahoo and Microsoft had their products long before Google did – but there is little doubt that they stole the show with Gmail. With a faster interface and more storage than what other people had, Gmail accounts were hard to get when they first came out. Now anyone with the need for a non-work, web based email address can get one.
The real benefit of Gmail comes to those of us with domain names. If you have a domain name that all your email goes through, you can attach your domain email to Google and use them as the server. This allows all your email to show up from your domain but still take advantage of Google’s superior anti-spam filters and web based interface. If you don’t like the web interface, you can use your desktop email client and pull your email using POP3 or IMAP. The ability to get my email anywhere, on any computer makes this a must have service for me – I switched over to Google this last spring.
Know your Customer
In the business world you have to know who your customer is. As business moves out to the web, this becomes even more important. With Google Analytics you can keep track of some of the most valuable information about your website visitors. Do you want to know where in the world they came from? What computer/browser platform they are using? What pages did they visit and how long did they spend on each one? How about what search phrase they used to get to your site? These are all things that Google Analytics can do for you and with an easy to understand user friendly interface.
I Can Hear it in Your Voice
One of the newest services out of Google is Google Voice. You may have heard all the noise back and forth between AT&T and Google regarding this product. Google claims that AT&T has blocked the Google Voice iPhone app and AT&T is upset that Google doesn’t have to conform to the regulations (and costs) that they have to.
So, what is Google Voice? It’s really a new way of looking at you phone service. Many of us now have two, three and even four phone numbers. Most of us have voice mail to catch the calls that we miss but what if we could have one number that could reach us at any phone we were at. That is what Google Voice is all about. You can tell Google to have your friends ring your cell phone and your business contacts ring your work number. You can even have it ring all the phones at once and you pick up the one you happen to be at. If you are talking on your cell phone and want to transfer to one of your other phone, it’s as simple as dialing a few numbers.
That’s just the surface. You can setup custom messages for each person calling you. You can set people up in groups such as friends, work and family and each one gets different treatment – including going straight to voice mail. And speaking of voice mail, Google can transcribe it and send it to you via email or SMS message. To close up the missing link in this service, just this week Google bought a voice over IP service. This may bring full end-to-end voice service from Google.
So What Else is There?
I haven’t even touched on things that we take for granted such as YouTube and Google Maps as well as Picasa, Google Docs, Google Earth, Chrome, Blogger, SketchUp, the list goes on and on.
In the future we may see Wave – a completely new integration of email, instant messaging and interactive work flow – take up speed. Google services will continue to grow and each one of them will give us an opportunity to determine its own value in our lives.
Don’t be Evil
Google’s motto is “Don’t be Evil”. With all this data at their fingertips many people say that they know too much. Has Google gotten so big that they can’t help but be “Evil”? What is your privacy worth? Are you willing to give some of it up for ease of use and free services? That is a question we all should ask every day whenever we give out our personal information. For me the answer is “yes, a little bit.” But you always have to be careful with what you do give out – there is no such thing as being anonymous any more.
November 13, 2009