Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Google Services

Google is no longer simply a search engine. They have a stranglehold on the information services arena. Most users use google though for searching for businesses, research projects, addresses or simply because they are too lazy to type in the URL for the destination. Right now google has introduced many services such as google maps, where you can search for addresses and it will show you the actual satellite image of the location as well as google scholar where you can look up articles and indexes for free. I was introduced today to google docs which is a virtual document briefcase where you can save and store all your documents. As a computer technician, I run across many users who have corrupted a floppy disk or lost a USB key, Google docs eliminates this problem. In addition, you can customize your mygoogle page to only communicate and display things that are of interest to you. Google does this by using files called cookies which monitor your online activity and get a rough idea of what types of things you are into. For example a historian who types in Lincoln will return the results of pages of abraham lincoln wheras a car enthusiast who types the same thing will receive an ad or a review of the lincoln car. This is a very useful tool rather than a boring homepage which stays the same everytime. I receive news on a daily basis regarding the things i want to hear about. Its great!

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