Google. The search engine giant. This is an example of a very smart company, making steady moves to increase its users, and also building a very good brand name.
They started with a search engine name of which was a spelling mistake, and fine tuned it to such extend that the term ’search on web’ was replaced by ‘Google for it’.
They shows relevant ads and made all they money to grow bigger. And then they shared the money with other websites to show Google ads. They earn through AdWords and shared it with partners through AdSense.
They started an email service, GMail, with features unheard of at the time of lunch. 1 GB of free inbox, free POP3 when Yahoo was giving 6 MB and Hotmail was giving 2 MB and both charging for POP3 access. you must be joking. Many though it as just an April fool joke.
One of their employees made a social networking site as private project. The company sensed the feature and made it one of its major faces. The name of the developer was Orkut Büyükkökten, the site is Orkut.
They acquired the right companies and improved on their products.
Blogging?? Do you mean Blogger?
Online Photo Sharing, you have Picasa.
Online Video Sharing, you look no further from YouTube.
You need maps, go for Google Maps.
You have a online application suite with Google Docs and Google Calendar.
Messenger with voice chat?? Google Talk.
You have a mobile phone. No need to feel left out. Access most of the services at Google Mobile Products.
Just take an example of Google Maps for Mobiles (GMM). Few months back, it started a new service called ‘My Location’. For those who don’t know, it shows your current location if your phone has a GPS, and it can also show an approximate location even if your phone doesn’t have a GPS. So how it is done? Well each GSM operator tower has an unique cell id. If your phone has location API, the GMM can access this cell id and send it back to Google server. Now Google does the smart thing. If the user has GPS and also has location API, the application sends both and it is stored on Google location servers. When only location data is available (non-GPS handset), it just sends the data to server and gets the corresponding GPS values from location servers. And with this you get your approximate location. If you move to area which is not listed in location servers without GPS function, you will not get any guess of your location. But any other GMM user with GPS will send that data and update the database and next time you will get a correct guess.
Okay for now there is nothing wrong. The application even shows that it is sending data to server and you can easily opt-out of it. But since the My Location service is good for use, it will be continued my most of the users. That will keep on populating the database without any cost to Google. Now this free data can be used to send targeted ads like showing restaurants or movie halls on map near the place where you are right now. There are many more such uses of location database for targeted advertisement, and Google sure will have a good plans. So a free service for you is a cost saving/money making service for Google.
So knowingly or unknowingly, everyone using any of above and many other Google services, is already working for Google, populating their complex database, and thus improvising the service.
As an end user, I am happy as I get the service for free, and fast. Advertisers are happy because they know the ads will be shown to potential customers only instead of paying for a big ad campaign. Google is happy as they get steady stream of advertisers, and the services opens many smart ways to show the direct/indirect ads.
The latest step in this direction is Google Chrome. About 2 years ago, Google made April fools joke about a Google browser. Now after 2 years and 5 months, we are going to have a beta version of real Google browser: Google Chrome. This time also the features are very promising. A very modular structure, each tab runs in separate process, and even each engine (HTML rendering, JavaScript engine, etc) in each tab runs in separate process. So if one of the thing crashes, you can still continue with other tabs. With this open source project, taking components from Apple WebKit, Google Gears and JavaScript engine V8, Google wish to take on established players like Microsoft’s IE, Opera, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari. And I am sure, it must have a very long term plans with this browser also. But as long as I am getting my job done, I am happy.
Update: Download Google Chrome.
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