Re: Frankie caught up in Hurricane Katrina!
Ok, so maybe when Google got started by two college students five years ago, it was just an innocent project. But Google went public a few months back, and now we really do all have something to fear.
Right now, there's three major operating systems (referred to as an OS from here on out): Windows, MacOS, and Linux. And there's three major Internet browsers as well: Internet Explorer, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox (built on and including the Netscape code). And there's one major search engine: Google. What about taking Google and adding it to the first two lists? What if there was a so-called Gbrowser Google Internet browser, and a GOS, a Google Operating System? I'm telling you, these people are slowly taking over the world.
As I stated, the engine began as a college project about seven years ago. It was then expanded to include an image search engine, a directory, and an USENET groups service, all except the groups fairly normal in search engines.
But it wasn't long before Google Labs was launched. This page at
www.labs.google.com shows many things that Google is working on. A while back they launched Google News and Froogle, along with Google Catalogs, Google Local, Google Sets, and more. To roll in the money, why not launch Google Answers, they thought, which has question askers put a price on their question and expert researchers give them an answer. Google Directory breaks down the Internet into categories; Google Local acts as a local phone book; Google Wireless lets you do a Google search from basically any device, phone, PDA, anything with Internet access; Special Searches and University Search give you ways to search specific sites; Google Alert alerts you to changes in a set search by email or pager; the Google Toolbar lets you do all of this from any page on the Net. Since they've gone public, Google's done even more in just the last three months: Gmail; Blogger; Keyhole; Picasa; and an enhanced version of Google Translate.
Now, there's only a few biggies in that list, namely, Gmail. This was a groundbreaking email client that has made Yahoo! and MSN go crazy trying to upgrade their services. But now there's Desktop Search, a tool that you download and use to search your own hard drive, instead of the Internet. This tool directly competes with Windows' built-in search engine, and while it's not the first to do that, when you pair that with the fact that Google registered the domain
www.gbrowser.com a couple of months back, it's enough to get a few shivers.
After the GBrowser, the next big step will be the GOS. Unlike current operating systems, the GOS won't be based on physical hard drives. It will be completely virtual to you as a computer user. Instead, it will be Google's Linux servers that host the entire OS. Go to
http://www.google.com/options/index.html and notice all of Google's different apps. Then imagine that as your wallpaper, or on your Start menu, or your Dock. Those things are the
essence of your PC. It has no hard drive. Maybe now we're headed in a path to dual-core processors, but we don't really need them because your computer won't need power. Just a simple video card to display the signals sent from Google. Everything is from Google. You choose from those applications, and you're always connected to the Internet. There is no alternative. There is nothing else. This is the way it is. It sounds good until you think about the fact that Google has control over everything. Eventually, the entire Internet will be "secure" and then the word "secure" won't have a meaning anymore. It will be the same as any other page. Lock icon or not, Google will scan your documents, your email, your searches, your
life, and then provide relevant advertisements, even if you pay for their operating system. That's not right.
We must stop them while we can, and there is hope.
Since it's conception, the Internet has existed in the virtual world. Sure the servers exist, but the IP addresses aren't real. I mean, they're there, but you can't hold them. You can't touch the files. You can print them out, but can you actually open up a hard drive and
touch the files? Searching has traditionally been about
researching, about finding information on something that you don't know about, probably in somewhere you don't know much about. What if we were to take the Internet into the physical world, and make it possible to touch the files and instantly find information in your own neighborhood?
If you're thinking about Google Desktop, you're on the wrong track here. This is a challenging concept, but think about it in terms of dimensions...