The Power of Google

    Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were two students attending Stanford for their PhD's. Google became a public company on August 19th, 2004. Each year Google has grown and has increased their technology. An individual is able to type in any word in the box and thousands of pages will pop up. But Google is not just a place to search information. People are able to access, images, videos, news, maps, and even the Earth. An individual now has the power to go on Google Earth and type in any address and Google will zoom in at the location and see objects move. Google offers an individual everything to an individual and maybe they offer too much. Even though there are some negatives people complain about such as the lack of privacy, Google has many positives that weigh out the negatives. Google will go down as one of the most powerful inventions in our history.
     Google continues to grow its product year after year. Recently, Google has created a new way when you type something into the search box it predicts on the bottom what the individual is trying to type in. Google has the power to see what individuals around the world are searching and based on this information guess what the individual is trying to search. Also, Google now remembers all of the individual’s recent searches and goes from there. Google memorizes your history on the website and based on the individual’s history, they try and guess what the individual is looking for. This is one of the things that people complain about when it comes to Google. They say that they know too much about an individual and the person has no privacy on the web. In Siva Vaidhynathan's article "Googlization of Us" he talks about the power of Google and the realities that people need to accept in current society. Vaidhynathan said, "Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion" (Vaidhynathan). Siva's point is that young people are already use to the new technology and social network and have come to accept that privacy does not exist. He also believes a big reason why individuals are complaining about the lack of privacy is they are scared what might be posted about them. Vaidhynathan said, "When we complain about infringements of privacy, what we really demand is some measure of control over our reputations" (Vaidhynathan).Siva tries to explain here that people complain about the privacy on Google, but really they are just afraid somebody will post a picture or video of them and it will damage their reputation. Even though an individual may complain about the lack of privacy on Google, there are many resources that an individual can access all on one website.
     Google is an extremely powerful resource. An individual is able to access anything they ever need on this website. If an individual needs to find an address for an interview then a person can go to Google Maps and see how the building looks. An individual was not able to access these things before Google. Google gives an individual the opportunity to look up a topic and find thousands of WebPages related to their topic. I could not survive without Google. Google has helped me in so many ways and I feel an individual at my age would not know what to do if Google collapsed. Google has everything an individual needs all on one website, which is why Google will be remembered as one of the greatest inventions in our history.