G is for Google…

That’s right I said it,  Google.

Don’t get me wrong, I prefer Google, yet, there is something that is unsettling about it.

Google is full of great ideas and cool things – but if it Google isn’t careful, they could find themselves as a good idea in theory that in reality not so much kind of list on someone’s blog for some A-Z challenge.

Oh wait, looky here.

Today’s Mental Moment…

is about Google.  I guess they have arrived.

Google is a household name, and there isn’t  much you can do on a PC without running into Google.  Or a smartphone, or …  Whether you use them or not, I think I can safely say we all know who and what Google is…

But do you really know ?

A little history, Google Inc., much like Amazon, started in a garage, with a check for $100,000.00 and the name, derived from a mathematical term googol, used to represent the number one followed by 100 zeroes and a good play on words for its founders who, like Bezos with the name Amazon, hoped as they indexed thousands of bits of information on the web, they would soon take over the world…

No wait,

sorry they just thought is was a good pun, we can’t prove (nor disprove though) they had any intention of taking over the world.

It may have just been an accident you know.  I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, after all if I believe they set out to run the internet, and eventually take over the planet, then it becomes a much darker in theory idea then I even want to discuss.  In addition, I seem a little paranoid going with that angle.

I am not paranoid at all, and I love Google.

Love Love Love Google.  (think that will throw off the internet police? )

🙂

Ok, in all seriousness, or as much as I am capable of anyways, Google is a fine company with one (of many) belief that “great isn’t good enough”

That’s cool.

What boggles my mind is the fact everything is connected and synced and ..stuff, from one device to the next and while I won’t complain of the convenience of being able to access my documents on my phone just saved on my desktop in Google Drive a second ago, or my photos on G+ or my Gmail synched in real time, it just gives me the creeps.

Am I alone here?

When I first heard of Google, it was a search engine, and I used it because, well, I liked how it looked.  Sorry but I am a visual person and the colors and layout and simplicity was appealing.  Now of course I am a Google addict, I mean loyal user, although as is a common thing for my generation, and none beyond I am convinced, I forget to Google things I don’t know.  I have absolutely no idea of the wealth of information at my fingertips at any given moment about any topic I could wish to research, or learn of …..it is beyond my scope of conceptualizing.

I learned to at least consider Google at some point after my almost step-daughter lived with me for a while and I asked her once why she Googled everything and she countered with

Why don’t you?

Since I have started using the computer and the internet and technology for my livelihood (the starving writer/artist thing ya know? ) almost every single platform, application, piece of technology I use every day has Google fingerprints all over it.  Almost like they licked the windows kind of smudges too.

Consider This:

The rate of speed at which technology changes these days is kind of fast, in fact I am not exactly sure why “at the speed of technology” or “the speed of Google”  has not replaced “the speed of light”  as a simile.  Just saying.

Google has masterfully kept up with, even led the charge but there is so much going on that even the smart people are left scratching our heads (see what I did there 😉  ) 

While I accept the fact there will come a day my brain will implode or self destruct based on information overload and I will then be stuck at whatever point I am at and reliant on my offspring to help me navigate my way through the muck, and I see that very day looming on the horizon, I don’t accept it will be because I am not smart enough to figure this stuff out.  It’s  because I can’t keep up.

In addition to the problem of high-speed change, because that really is the problem, change and adjustment, at the rate we are expected to adapt, what the real issue at hand with Google is how it is everywhere and runs so many things in our lives.  They are becoming, like some other things we have looked at already, the machine.

The one eating up all it can acquire, growing at a phenomenal pace, and I think if it doesn’t  slow down this big fat caterpillar will not evolve into a butterfly, but remain a big fat, slimy worm.  Or explode.  Just saying.

My almost stepdaughter, when asking me why I don’t use Google for everything,  then asked me if I could imagine a world without Google.

I looked at her for a while before reminding her, I lived in the world before Google was a twinkle in anyone’s eye.  Yes I can.

Except I am not so sure anymore since Google has its fingers in so many of the things we now take for granted on a daily basis, I want to think about a world without them, or the fallout from Google getting too big for their own britches and a catastrophic fail on their part.  I can imagine a world without Google, even to the far reaches of going back to that kind of life.

It’s my kids, and their generation and the generations to come who would be left confused and dazed to the googol² degree,  and not know what to do..

Maybe I should go Google bubbles bursting …

To Your Mental State, whatever it may be.

If you enjoy these Mental Moments, you might want to take a look at my book, A Month of Mental Moments, available exclusively at Redmund Productions in Paperback, Kindle, epub and PDF, for a very reasonable price for so much in one book.  It might be the difference between me starving or not.  No just kidding but you can find out why you shouldn;t take any guilt trip anyone has to offer and you always have choices… no lie.. check it out, and thank you for taking the time.   ♥

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