Googles 8th Birthday

So google is eight years old. I was first introduced to google probably around seven years ago when it was first talked about in slashdot. I used to use altavista at the time but quickly moved to Google due getting better results and its simplicity.

In 2000 I also optimised a website for my company at the time. It was optimised so that it would be ranked one in a particular search. This was because I expected google to be the number one search engine in the world.

To get an invite for my gmail account I had to send a postcard from fiji to a lady in the US. I still mainly use msn but am starting to use gtalk. For the majority of my work I have switched to Google Spreadsheets and Writely. I still use word though for complicated documents.

I have tried Google Calendar which has a lot of promise but the reality is it sounds all good in theory but practically updating calendar for a meetings, events etc seem more work then is needed. We used to have lotus note calendars that had group collaboration but the effort seemed more then the reward.

My best Google product besides Google search is google spreadsheet which I use to keep issues of all my projects, set up meeting times with my staff and getting staff to log work with our clients. Its simple, majority of people know how to use it and the collaboration aspects is actually practical, especially with external clients.

As shown by my frequency of blogposts i havent been using blogger lately mainly because of being banned by adsense. I have put in another appeal and we will see what happens with that. Which reminds me that I am no longer on dmoz which is expected if you dont post for awhile.


Okay my take on Google is that is has lost a lot of its karma and doesnt have the same mojo as before. A classic example is that its frequency in terms of top posts in digg has really been reduced. I argued this is what going to happen as a lot of us are being banned from adsense. If you rely on guerilla marketing then you should be careful in how you treat your power users. I would bet significantly more power users get banned from adsense then normal users speaking from my own experiences and values.

I still believe Google is a good company with good products but my loyalty is gone. Which reminds me of Microsoft. Two weeks ago, I was at microsoft presentation in Fiji and half the presentation was about the social work they were doing. Microsoft was also introducing the new manager for the region. Classic case of Microsoft moving away from SAP types of Salespeople to down to earth techies. Its like microsoft has read my post on "Microsoft where to for now" and are moving in that direction.

So after eight years I think the feeling I am getting is that Google has moved from the cool new company to one of the industry heavyweights. So happy birthday Google, and may you have many more birthdays.