A World Without Google [Infographic]

Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 4m 1,076 #google

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

For some people, Google is the greatest company that has ever existed, has contributed so much to changing the world and technology, and continues to be an influence for many people and companies. Google has helped companies get noticed, get their brand out there, and get rich doing it. Google has also helped many companies and people get rich from specializing in understanding its search engine algorithms and promising to boost rankings in a Google search. Google also created another set of people and companies hoping to get rich by promising to fix penalties Google has placed on Internet websites. For everything Google does, there are always people out there to harness in on the power of Google and figure out a way to make money doing the things Google wants or undoing the things Google does not want.

On the other hand, there are also some people who despise Google, hate it with a passion, have boycotted it, want nothing to do with it, have switched to alternative search engines and products, and do everything in their power to destroy it or go against it by not obeying the rules and policy it sets for being displayed in its search engines. They feel as if Google is trying to change too much the way the Internet works and feel that Google has no right to do so.

For those of us who knew the world before Google existed, who knew the Internet before Google existed – using search engines such as Yahoo, Lycos, and Webcrawler to find the websites we were looking for – though it is hard to recall if there were many people at play fooling these search engines with meta keywords and keyword stuffing, it was a revolution that Google eventually stopped. There was a time when Google did not exist, when most research and data was done through a card catalog at the library, and “researching” on the Internet was hardly a thought. But what if Google never existed? What technology would disappear? What would we be using instead?

This infographic hypothetically begins to eliminate all things Google. Check it out and see if you would miss Google if it was gone for good.

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Text-Friendly Version

A World Without Google

Larry Page meets Sergey Brin ….. ’95

’96

Google.com domain is registered ….. ’97

Google incorporates ….. ’98

Google gains funding and opens Palo Alto office ….. ’99

Google has indexed one billion web pages ….. ’00

Google introduces image search ….. ’01

Partnership with AOL showing search and sponsored links on AOL properties … ’02

Google announces AdSense and acquires Blogger.com ….. ’03

Google IPO starts, 19,605,52 shares at $85 per share ….. ’04

Google introduces Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Talk, and Google Analytics ….. ’05

Google introduces Google Calendar and Google Docs ….. ’06

Google introduces Street View and OpenSocial ….. ’07

Google has indexed one trillion web pages ….. ’08

’09

’10

’11

What if there was no Google^™?

Docs

Allowed users to conveniently open any document without having to download it or another application to their computers

Added many conveniences to many Google services such as GMail and Google Scholar

Calendar

• Allows individuals and businesses to sync their calendars and meetings
• Web interface allows people to see when someone is free to meet

Image Search

• Allowed all image-based medias to expand globally through the web by  enabling users to find nearly any image ever created

Blogger

• A popular blogging service which Google bought, hosted on it’s service, and began redesigning and updating with current web search standards

Earth

• Many professional applications for people who depend on geographic and topographic information
• Extensive layers have many users in a broad rang of fields such as meteorology and conservation

Gmail

• Cleaner interface than webmail predecessors, in traditional Google minimalist design
• Revolutionary storage capacity for the time, allowing people to never have to delete their email
• Introduced groundbreaking spam blocking technology

Maps

• Greatly improved on previous travel direction services
• API allowed developers to utilize before unaccessable mapping technologies in revolutionary ways

Analytics

• Introduced an unprecedented way of exploring analytics data
• Allowed companies and individuals to see detailed statistics regarding visitors to their site free of charge

Search 

• The core of Google’s offerings, which has been continually updated by Google to allow users to have more personalized results, and incorporating innovative features like page previews and real-time news integration

Who would take Google’s Place?

Yahoo!

Yahoo was once pitted to be everyone’s portal to the Internet, however once Google’s minimalist design gained more admirers users began to have less tolerance for the cluttered and busy layout of Yahoo’s homepage. Yahoo has also lost the support of many by buying popular services, notably bookmarking service del.icio.us, and then not supporting them. Del.icio.us was recently rumored to be closing, by Yahoo, has stated they are looking to sell the property. Many think that this mishandling is indicative of Yahoo’s inability to meet and understand the needs of its users.

bing

Microsoft’s foray right into the middle of Google’s bread and butter. In July 2009 it was announcted that Bing would power Yahoo Search. Notably, bing changes the background image of their search engine daily to show noteworthy places or interesting things. Microsoft paid Verizon $550 million USD to ‘turn off’ other search engines on Verizon’s Blackberry and make Bing the primary method of search. Bing has received some criticism for being slower to index websites than Google, perhaps because of their lack of advanced algorithms and optimized server farms.

Would we be better off?

YES

Google retains its user data indefinitely leaving a goldmine of data about people that Google could potentially misuse or could fall into the hands of a “big brother” government agency.

Google is a monopoly on web search, and has already proven to place their own services higher in results than independent company websites would get through popularity. Monopolies are dangerous.

NO

The benefits of Google’s services outweigh the potential risks of it being misused. If you have nothing to hide you shouldn’t worry anyway.

Google has shown to reflect their slogan “Do No Evil” and has respected its user privacy, encouraged open-source software, and given millions to philanthropic organizations. They have earned the trust of their users.

Infographic brought to you by: SingleGrain

Infographic by obizmedia.com

Matthew Gates is a freelance web designer and currently runs Confessions of the Professions.

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