Sunday, September 27, 2009

Happy Birthday Googlle - homage to Google

Happy 11th birthday Google



My world has changed more in the last 11 years than at anytime in the 41 years that preceeded. Thanks to Google, I can find out whatever I want to know with a few clicks of a mouse.

In times of yore, I went to the library and looked up references, I spent hours and days poring over Index Medicus, I took tomes out of dusty libraries, I spent hours filling in forms, photocopying documents etc etc and now, thanks largely to Google's brilliant search engine I can do all of this in seconds.

I don't have Google ads on my blogs (I am not poor enough - yet) but Google ads encourage people to write well. Sites usually make you pay to remove the adverts. Google pays you to have advertisements. I would rather live in Googles' world.

I was surprised to find I have bought more than a 1000 books from Amazon over the years. Some cost 3 figures or more. The books might be valuable but its their information I want. By separating content from container, the book market may come to grief, but my work will get easier and cheaper! There are dozens of volumes I would like but are too expensive, or are only available in the British Library. The British Library won't let me in, because I don't have a letter from a University. Google books promises me treasures beyond compare

Google maps - it was nice to see my house on line, although had I known they were coming past, I would have cleaned the windows. My mother, were still alive, would be more ashamed of me than ever.

Google blogs - you have made me the most famous "Dr Liz Miller" on the Internet. You even have a sense of humour. I like to think of myself as part of one of your jokes click here

Google, you are the God of the future. I worry sometimes you are alone, so far ahead of your time, but there are other Gods, like Facebook, Ebay and Amazon. The future is a place where businesses give people what they need, for little more than the cost of production. As opposed to Microsoft, where a dependent consumer or business is forced each year to tithe their business as new editions and updates of software come spewing forth

The nicest thing I can think of to say about a book or business is "More Google than Gates"

Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller
http://www.lizmiller.info/

Find out more - Buy the Book!

2 comments:

Tikno said...

Well written about the Google world. Like you, I also felt "more Google than Gates".

You might be interested with "Project 10^100" from Google, a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.
Please vote for the idea you believe will help the most people at:

http://www.project10tothe100.com/vote.html

There are 16 big ideas, but I vote for the idea to "Make educational content available online for free". Hopefully these Google Project will make big different to our life.

Tikno

Dr Liz Miller said...

Thanks Tikno,
I am off to vote now ;-) hopefully this is an election that makes a difference!