At work I was asked to find out what our competitiors were charging for one of our books, I was asked to go through sites like Ebay, Amazon etc and note the prices. Not wanting to search over and over again I decided to use Google’s price comparison tool; Froogle. I use this tool a few times a week at least but this time it hit me how many products of Google I actually use.

Looking through my Google account, it turns out that I use or have accounts on (excluding the search itself):

• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Orkut
• Google Analytics
• Google Adsense
• Blogger
• Google Talk (GTalk)
• Google Maps
• Google Earth

and I still dont think thats a comprehensive list.

Why do I use these services? Easy…..because they are powerful and most importantly they work.

Take Email, I have a Gmail, Live Mail and a Yahoo Mail account, they all work very well but Google wins through with its powerful SPAM filter, nested conversations, storage space, POP3 access, Chat feature and also its a damn site quicker than the other two. The AJAX on Live and Yahoo lags too much and I am frustrated while it loads. Gmail also doesnt try to be a desktop application, the other two try too hard implementing right clicks and so forth.

Google Analytics is basically a rip of Urchin, a supremely powerful web statistics program that was acquired by Google a couple of years back. It delivers much more comprehensive stats that Webalizer and AW Stats, using graphs and also allows different sections for Webmasters, Marketers and Executives (shown below).

Adsense pays pretty well for a small blog like this, the ads are relevant and customizable, I shouldnt be too far from my first payment from them now.

I like how Google works, I like the fact they innovate, I like the fact that they see other companies innovating and then bring them under their umbrella thus creating a better product, uniting them with other teams within Google. Privacy isnt a big deal for me, I dont care if Google reads my mail, I have nothing to hide and people who have problems with it have nothing better to worry about.

Will Google become the new Microsoft? No…….plainly and simply because they encourage assistance, they encourage innovation and they do what they do better than everyone else.

Share and Enjoy:

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