Google’s Plan to take over the World

[Smartweb]

Google’s Plan to take over the World For years Microsoft has been seen as the standard vendor of almost all computer software products. Microsoft’s products are the industry standard products for almost anything, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, and many more. There is, though, one area in which another company has dominated, and that is in Internet search. That is the realm of Google. Google started out several years ago as a mere search engine, and since then it has grown to be just as standard as any of Microsoft’s products. The word “google” has even become a commonly used verb. Google has at least as good, if not better, name recognition as does Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer, and now Google is positioning itself to use that to move into the software industry. More recently Google has created a number of new products. They have expanded search to desktop search, allowing anyone to install the desktop search product to run instant searches of their files and email. Google Earth is a program that lets people view high resolution satellite images of the Earth and search for physical locations, such as restaurants. It’s a very well designed program that can easily make vacation planning easier. This past week, they have released an additional feature to desktop search—the sidebar. Google’s sidebar is pretty useful, it displays email, stocks, and RSS feeds. Then the next day, the Internet was buzzing with news about Google’s new instant messaging program, to rival MSN, AOL, and Yahoo. They’re just getting started. It is no secret that Google is currently developing a web browser. Mozilla Firefox has been out for almost a year now, and it’s taken eight percent of the market share from Internet Explorer. Even more remarkable is that they got it from starting with no market share or well known name. Google should find it easy to get their web browser, whatever it’s called, to come into widespread use. Anyone who has “googled” before will be naturally curious about this new alternative to the old Internet Explorer. That’s their next big step. Once Google’s web browser is installed on 50% of the computers out there, they’ll naturally continue onto other areas. Many theories exist about Google’s next step, but mine is that they will port all their software products to Linux and create their own operating system based on the Linux core programs. This operating system will be easy to use, unlike most Linux distributions today, and with Google’s existing fame, many people will be interested. It is very possible that at some point Google will start charging money for their software. I believe that it is only a matter of time. After all, Google is just another corporate giant with plans to dominate the competition, and Google’s chances look good. If any company (or even open source group) could challenge Microsoft’s domination of the computer market, it is Google. I would highly doubt that Google will ever become quite the monopoly that Microsoft is, but the future of computers looks much less one sided. After studying the signs, I believe that, by the time this decade is out, Google will be a major player in the software market. Whether that actually happens or not, only time will tell. ---------------------- A few related links: http://labs.google.com http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html