Happy Birthday Google!

Hip Hip Hurray. Hip Hip Hurray. Hip Hip Hurray. Its really difficult to comprehend that Google has only been around for 14 years whilst in comparison two of their biggest rivals has a number of years on them, Microsoft has been around for 37 years and  Apple 36 years.

I can remember the first time using Google.com during IT classes whilts at high school, “Good Times”. At the same time Yahoo, Lycos (Remember Lycos?) and Ask Jeeves were all the rage and I can actually remember using all of them. Back then Google only offered a search engine and many questioned how good the results were and if such a radically different company could survive against the likes of Microsoft.

Today however we all take Google for granted and they are thriving, offering a plethora of diverse products and services spanning many industries such as search, maps, browsers, OS’s, Youtube, Payments, Productivity Software, Social and Advertising and many more. Google are currently testing driverless cars, they are the only company bold enough to drive around countries taking millions of images of streets to enhance their maps experience, they are currently in a massive publicity drive for their Glass project and the best thing of all is that Google gives away the majority of their products and services.

I have now been using Google products and services for years and this privilege has mostly been FREE, sure we pay by handing over valuable data which Google then monetize using advertising but there must be some compromise. The last 14 years has been an amazing journey for Google and its users and I can only dream of what the next 14 will be like.

Happy Birthday Google!