Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

Press the backspace key on my Nokia E63 and Google Search pops on screen. It has icons for Mail, Maps, Picasa and other Google apps. Hold the call key and say what you are looking for and it will search it for you you don’t even have to type. Switch to mail and you can read your mail on the go. Now you don’t have to even know what you are looking for, just type ‘Near me now’ in the search window and Google lists the most obvious choices starting with restaurants.

Google’s corporate moto is ‘Do no Evil’ and the search start-up doesn’t seem to know where to stop. So its taking over the world. Now it has a stake in medicine, renewable energy and even energy distribution. Larry Page and Sergie Brin would never have dreamed how their little search algorithm would change the world we live in. from providing free search, free alternative to all the GPS provided by giving turn by turn navigation Google Maps with Android 2.0 phones, to browsers that work smarter and cloudier than the others, to trying to catalogue all the books every written. Oh and it is not as if all of Google’s ideas are ground braking, free web mail was Hotmail, search was Archie in 1990, online maps was first done by Xerox Parc in early nineties, and the first browser was Netscape. The difference lies in the fact that their engineering mentality and the dedication to open source. Every that isn’t absolutely required isn’t included instead it is provided as an app or an extension. They have understood it better than most that most users don’t need or understand the bulky and often complicated features that most software come bundled with, and those who would like to use additional features will know how to use the add-ons.

Maps is one of the best example of how things work with it comes free as a download tailored to most middle level and high end phones, is easy to use and has a simple interface, when it was first launched, most place in India were nothing but high resolution satellite imagery. Not much detail was available, today if you take the pointer on the any landmark, say the Chinasawamy cricket stadium, in Bangalore, the pop bubble shows link to a Wikipedia entry that lists the famous matches that were played at the stadium. A friend of mine planned his Istanbul to London ride using Maps and it helped him track budget B&B’s rest stops and petrol stations. The shares of Tom Tom and Gramin dropped a few points when the service that they provide for a substantial fee, and still makes people drive into ditches, was offered free by Google on the Android 2.0 phone for no charge at all. With RFID tags on most products, barcodes that help in download a brief to an unknown place, with just a picture, Google promises to change the world. And it is inviting us to change with it too.