Google is a wonderful company and no doubt it has changed the way we browse internet. This sometimes has led to contemplate, has it become too big for comfort? Are we gradually becoming over dependent on the Search company that eventually it would be able to completely control our lives.
Think about it, everything that we do online has a google imprint on it. Right from the moment we start our computer ( load google OS on a google desktop) to browsing on Chrome, accessing email on Gmail, life completely revolves around google. These are the commonly used applications and I am not delving into google analytics, adwords, etc.
Even the Mobile phone has google run android on it.
Last week, Google has announced closure of its very loved Google Reader. All it took was 130 words on its blog to announce shutting down a system used by more than hundreds of millions. http://googlereader.blogspot.in/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html
“About eight years back, Google launched Reader in 2005. By offering it to users for free, it undercut, and ultimately eliminated, all substantial competitors in the news-aggregation business” (Source : http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/03/end-google-reader) If all it had to do was to get people use it, love it, get addicted to it and then kill it, why make it in the first place?
Of course there are other alternatives to it, and everyone who seriously used reader would gradually shift to it. But was it really necessary for google to shut it down?
The ones using it would gradually shift to other networks, but what about the independent bloggers and other web journalists who have built a dedicated base of subscribers over many years. All of it would be gone in a whiff!
Of course, Google is a “for profit” company and if a product does not make money the most sensible thing you do is to pull the plug. But seriously, how much resource was being used on this?
All those who are signing petitions to Google (and even one to The White House!) are missing the bigger point – this is a victim of the company’s DNA, one that’s accelerated under Larry Page’s management.
With this move, Google has lost a lot of my trust and I would seriously consider getting used to a google product. If it is reader today, it could be email tomorrow. Why not?
After a couple of years, when google realizes that a majority of us are addicted to gmail, it could simply threaten to pull the plug or force the users to cough up money. By then most would be very used to the email address provided by Google and would be forced to pay up.
Google has so much of my privacy data, it knows who are my contacts, what do I talk, what do I like and dislike, where all I go and many other things, that I am now really worried. Would I entrust it with all of this?
Thank you Apple and Facebook for slowing down google’s intentions. Imagine what bigger force google would have become had it ruled over us in Social Media too!
Google has 450,000 servers all over the earth, with no central nervous system. This is very similar to the skynet shown in the movie terminator. Is google the actual Skynet?