Google Technologies - Essay Example

Google Google is an American multinational organization that deals in internet-related products and services. Other than search engine, it offers cloud computing, software and advertisement related services. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both were studying at Stanford University. Brin and Page (on combined basis) have a share of about 16 percent in the company (Google Company, 2012). Initially Google was incorporated (on September 4, 1998) as a privately held company. Its IPO were Issued on August 19, 2004. The mission statement of the company was "to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful" (Google Company, 2012). Google also has an unofficial slogan ‘Don’t be Evil’ (Google Investor Relations, 2012). Here are five technologies from the house of Google; 1. The Trimble 3D Warehouse The Trimble 3D Warehouse (previously known as Google 3D Warehouse), is a supplementary website for Google SketchUp. This is a website where modelers can download, share and upload 3D Models (3D Warehouse, 2012). The inauguration of this 3D powerhouse was on April 24, 2006. Modelers can use this website to do many things such as upload a collection of 3D models; moreover, its users can also detect certain patterns through algorithm to create similar looking models. Separate models can be observed in 3D right from the Internet browser. According to PC World, 3D Warehouse lets users lacking significant artistic inclination to make and crowd 3D models (Preston, 2008). According to The New York Times, 3D Warehouse had become a virtual "dictionary" of 3D vocabulary. The virtual 3D workshop is so powerful that it suits film making, for instance; people can find detailed three-dimensional virtual models of famous building structures, all over the world. Even a street in Alabama has virtual set that can be used in the movies. With potent search and design tools, high-definition pictures of any bridge in the world can be incorporated into common visual dictionary for later usage. This is not a dictionary of words, but of pictures, readymade images. And these ‘words’ from the 3D vocabulary can be used to make movie. All needed parts can be mashed up with a snap of the finger. 3D Warehouse is such a powerful tool that it makes up a nice collage of image database, and this serves as a unique grammar for image-motion. Impact This tech product from Google has everything good about it. It is such a great tool for tech-savvy, web designers and electronic artists; they can have tons of fun while working with it. The only bad aspect I see is that professional web designers won’t be able to make much money as they used to because Google is making everything so easy that any person who knows how to operate a computer can learn to play with these tools and come up with something real complex that otherwise he had to pay lots of money previously. 2. Google Apps Google offers a fantastic service that provides independently customizable versions of various Google products, all under one custom domain, the Google Apps. It has numerous Web applications that resemble in operations to traditional office suites, and that includes G-Docs, Google Groups, Gmail, Google Calendar, Sites and Google Talk. Google Apps is the idea of Rajen Sheth, an employee at Google who is also known for developing Chromebooks (Metz, 2011). To attract customers, Google Apps for businesses is free (for a certain time period), however it is downgraded in their search engine results so users have to steer past priced offering (nice business strategy). Google Apps is also available in study materials and it’s free of cost. It packs features from both the Premium and Standard editions. Strictly speaking, exact figure if how many people use Google Apps cannot be known. However according to Google’s own estimates (Google blog post October 2011) almost 4 million businesses and 40 million home users use Google Apps. Google is making quite an effort to increase Google Apps usage, specifically in the public sector. For instance, quite recently an announcement in June, 2011 was made by US government agency, NOAA, declaring that their 25,000 employees will migrate to Google Apps by the end of year (Nicholas, 2011).  Impact The future belongs to apps, and Google is taking the lead in this market. The impact on the society will be great, everything will become very easy to manage and people will be saving a lot of time. Probably there will may great apps under development that students might be able to use and learn more. Studies will become more customized, more personal. 3. Blogger Blogger is a blog portal from Google. It holds all the features that any blog host has. Blogger allows private or multi-user blogs that have time-tagged entries. This blog hosting service was initially made by Pyra Labs, which Google bought in 2003. Despite that the blog host name is Blogger, actual blog posts are hosted with a subdomain, ‘blogspot.com’ (The Story of Blogger, 2012). Till May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed its users to post blogs on other hosts as well, through FTP. These blogs were later transferred (many are still undergoing this process) to Google’s server. This is done with domains other than blogspot.com when custom URLs are used for hosting (Blogger Buzz, 2012). Since its launch, a number of new features have been introduced, which include drag-and-drop template (an interface for editing), label organization, new Web feed and privacy options (for creating private blogs). Blogs can be updated in real time, a great improvement from rewriting HTML files. Impact There is no need to do any predictions here; Blogger is already having a great impact on society. Now everyone can share with the world whatever they feel like sharing. People have developed great skills in blogger and generate a lot of web traffic, nobodies have become celebrities that have great fan following. On the other side, there are also many hate blogs on blogger too, but the overall impact is great and besides it’s free to join. 4. FeedBurner Google also has a strong foothold in web feed management, it’s called FeedBurner. This system was launched back in 2004. Dick Costolo, Steve Olechowski, Matt Shobe and Eric Lunt are the founders of FeedBurner. FeedBurner offers custom RSS feeds and management tools for podcasters and bloggers as well as other publishers of web-content. FeedBurner does much more than offering a customized RSS feed, it offers publishers traffic analysis along with a solid advertising system (this is optional). Although it wasn’t originally clear whether advertising would fit well with the RSS format, but now authors choose to add advertising feature in almost two-third feeds of FeedBurner. Its users can observe the number of people that subscribe to their feeds and this is not it. They can also keep track of the service/program they subscribed to their feed with (Wikipedia Contributors, 2012). Impact This tech nugget from Google is packed with great stuff. People who develop websites, mange blogs and other content services online can benefit from it tremendously. It is a great way to have an efficient online business or to modify and existing business. The impact on the society will be great as people will have something to rely on during the next recession. The only negative of the FeedBurner is having too much information pounding at one’s website. This can become a nuisance as no one would like to read all the stuff coming through the feed and in the event of ignoring it, would probably miss out on some crucial stuff. 5. Google Analytics Google offers a free service called Google Analytics (GA) that creates in-depth stats about the visitor traffic on a website. Extra features and many customized options are also available in its premium version, which requires payment subscription. This Google Tech wizard is especially useful for marketers and not directly helpful to webmasters or technologists. It is interesting to know that web analytics industry originally grew from these technologists; however, it serves more to the marketers (Google Analytics, 2012). Google Analytics is very popular and it is the most widely used Internet statistics analysis service. According to a reliable market share analysis, Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (this ranking is according to Alexa) (Metric Mail Blog, 2012). Google Analytics’ tactic is to show high-level, dashboard-styled data for casual users, there is nothing too complicated in its graphs and charts. However, in-depth data is also available (this is found in the report set). By using Google Analytics, pages that are not performing up to expectation can be easily identified by using funnel visualization. Here, the visitors that came from referrals, how long they stayed on the website, their geographical location is identified. Google Analytics also offers more advanced functions that include ‘custom visitor segmentation’. People who sell products or services online can use Google Analytics ‘e-commerce reporting’ for better analysis. This tracks sales activity as well as performance. E-commerce on this Google platform reports how one’s website’s transactions and other commerce-related activities are going. All of this information is presented in nice metrics information. Impact This is a great addition in Internet marketing arsenal. People who do Internet marketing can keep track of where they need to sell their products and what kind of trends among customers are ‘in’ at the moment. This is great news for people who are looking to develop home based businesses. They will be able to spend less time, money and effort on analyzing marketing trends and hence will be able to focus on relevant tasks. The downside is that people will always feel that they are being tracked. Everything they buy online will be recorded somewhere and will be analyzed. Sense of insecurity can develop among online shoppers. Works Cited "3D Warehouse." 3D Warehouse. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2012. . "Blogger Buzz: The New Version of Blogger." Blogger Buzz: The New Version of Blogger. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2012. . "FeedBurner." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 July 2012. Web. 28 July 2012. . Gralla, Preston. "Build Your Own Model Parthenon with Google Sketchup." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 29 Dec. 2008. Web. 28 July 2012. . "Google Analytics." Google Premium Feature List A Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2012. . Hoover, Nicholas. "InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology." Informationweek. N.p., 9 June 2011. Web. 28 July 2012. . Metz, Cade. "Chromebook: ‘Father of Google Apps’ Raises Second Child." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 07 Oct. 2011. Web. 28 July 2012. . "The Story of Blogger." About Us. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2012. . "The Metric Mail Blog." Google Analytics Market Share. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2012. . Read More