#Week 3. Google: The age of an empire and its influence worlwide


This week, I will talk about web searches and how they have influenced the internet therefore the World and in particular Google.

Let’s start from the beginning. I think when internet started and some thousands of websites where active, the needed for a web searcher could not be seen so relevant, but at some point, the fact of the exponential growth and endless amount of information online, a filter that can drive us to the answer of our question had become essential.

It is important to remark that Google started making the money out of adds. The owners of these adds had to pay for the number of clicks received on their website, a model of business called cost per click (CFC), and in fact patented by goto.com, company bought later by Yahoo. Yahoo and Google had a legal battle between them, finally resolved with an out of court agreement where Google agreed to share some of its share values in exchange for its perpetual licence to use, so they bet hard for this model which is still today one of main sources of profit from google.

This model all alone was having a solid growing until the financial crisis that hit the world in 2007. Then, it began to decline and they started to shift from their initial standing for an ethical conduct towards a profitable oriented approach and the one that has been proven successful economically and achieved thanks the http cookie tracking. Everything became easier with the launch of their own web browser Google Chrome. It seems to me that It was a win to win situation and also difficult to reject and the crisis was the last push to move to it, since google has the information needed to adjust the results of search to your personal features and moreover to adjust the adds to your persona. From that moment on, the company has been unstoppable, diversifying also the line of business and the range of provided services, absorbing competitors,… By that time they bought youtube, developed android software, maps and later cloud technologies and hardware.
It was in 2016 that google removed the last barrier separating browsing habits from data collected by its other services like gmail or google maps. Nowadays it is all interconnected and tracked.

Here below a video provided by google, explaining how they use the cookies.

 

The fact that many old people that have been introduced to internet through mobile phones think that internet is Google, speak of the huge success of the application. Also one of the most commonly used words today is Google, because we tend to go to the searcher to find what we cannot remember anymore.

Google is part today of  Alphabet Inc. what it is one of world’s most valuable companies, which has other branches more oriented in new technologies and by far not as profitable as it is Google. 


I guess it is become one of the biggest monopolies and sources of power. The influence that has all around is out of question.  

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