Is google next information monster?

Google is becoming one and only one gateway to internet, novice user start surfing from google on other end expreienced user knows how to dig better information using google.


So in my opinion most of internet user knows internet as google shows.


Is google information monster if not now then will it be?

Is google next information monster?
Since the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization has risen greatly and the stock price has more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). In January 2005 the shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly 4 percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On the same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S%26amp;P 500. (Source: Google Shares Rise on New Price Target. L.A.Times. URL accessed on June 1, 2005.) When companies are first listed on the S%26amp;P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price due to the rapid accumulation of the stock within index funds that track the S%26amp;P. On June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.


With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google [11]. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Virtual Earth competes with Google Earth). Some have even suggested that in addition to an Internet Explorer replacement Google is designing its own Linux based operating system called Google OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. Rumors of a Google browser are fueled by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google.
Reply:Seems like Google is not at all the only search engine out there.





They have a lot of information, and they may aggregate a bunch of it. They seem to even be a little reluctant to go to far with doing that.





Now, there are some other companies that have quite a lot of information about quite a lot of people. Take, for instance, Doubleclick.





For all the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) brought up when Google's name is mentioned, they are basically a web search company with some other services they sell and give away for free. They sell a couple hardware products too. And they do some other things.





Google is far, far, far from a monopoly, however. There are many, many, many web search companies out there. Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL - tons of companies out there have web search engines. Their names are hardly a secret and many of them have been around for around a decade. Competition is hardly extinct.





Web searching systems is a useful commodity too. There have been web search engines out since the mid-1990s. Initially, there was Yahoo, which had a big directory and sought to catalog everything.





That become very labor intensive, however. The Mozilla Open Directory project sought to distribute the labor of keeping a web directory up to date. They did this by using a large number of volunteers.





Eventually, however, there got to be so many sites and pages out there that it was beyond any reasonably economical way to keep an up-to-date list.





Search engines have mostly taken over the job of keeping track. In a sense, they do the same thing as the old manually maintained directories did. They just do it faster by automating it. Hardly scary stuff. Computers were invented to do drudge work.





When organizations put their infomation together, then it is much more scary.





If you are concerned about information, you should study up on privacy issues and things you can do to protect your privacy. If you are concerned about automation, just think about how dreary the job would be of keeping track of every web page in the world via emails and hand-edited directories!





Just remember, you can keep track of things too!





You can write them down on a piece of paper and put them in your wallet. You can bookmark them. You don't have to save your bookmarks in your browser.





You can save your bookmarks on Yahoo - they have a couple of services to do that: Yahoo Bookmarks and Yahoo My Web 2. There is also the del.icio.us web site. The selection is not imploding. If anything, it is growing, at least in terms of diversity.





Back in the 1990s, there were myriad places you could go to find other places. Over half a decade later, there are still too many such search places to count.





Remember, you can find more searching services out there using Google, Yahoo, or whatever your favorite one is at the moment.





I have provided some links. Hope this helps you see how things fit together and makes it all a little less scary to you.
Reply:Listen to the audio excepts of the Google team Larry Page, Eric and Sergey Brin with the Executive Editor Adi Ignatius of Time magazine. They have talked about the various issues like what "Don't Be Evil" really means at:





http://i5bala.blogspot.com/2006/02/googl...