Since google is more than a search engine now and is developing software to coencide with the company I figured I would place this here. However if any of the mods feel it belongs somewhere else feel free to move it.

I recently purchased a magazine from the Reference Series from Sandhills Publications. The magazine's title is "Guide to Using Google: Discover Googles Buried Treasures. It has very few ads in it and is loaded with info....for $9 it better be.

First off let me say that I am not a Google fanatic. I simply like the idea behind their vision and have grown to like many of their features and software packages. Personally I used to use yahoo untill google came around and it wasn't long before i switched. My reason was the simple home page they had and the fact they had an easy image search option. Then i started looking into some of their other features. Gmail is one i think I'm going to like a lot.

Before I get into some of the things in the magazine I would like to say that i do have some negative points to google. One is that they are kind of getting arrogant to the market. They have let their stock rise above $400 without doing a stock split. This kind of says they don't want the common stock holder buying their stock. Only well off people now can pretty much purchase a good number of shares of their stock. This could be a bad thing or a good thing. It means although a lot of people are buying it is not skyrocketing to enormous amounts of ownership to stockholders. It also has other benefits but I still think they are getting a little arrogant. Next they are putting software and other things out a pace that is alarming. They need to slow it down just a little. Not much but they should make sure the product has some features to it....example is GoogleTalk. As of now it is bare bones and isn't making very many people switch over from the other messengers. They need to watch the market closely now because competitors are now trying to take them down....and I don't have a good feeling that they are monitoring this closely.

I do like the fact that they have MSN and Yahoos panties in an uproar.

What I am going to try to do is get one area of the magazine covered each time i post, starting tomorrow. If there are days i don't post anything it is just because I haven't either had time to prepare it or I am super busy with college work....which is a great possiblity this term.

This isn't from the magazine but I noticed they now have google video and a google pack. The video section allows you to download video. Some are to buy for a low cost and others are free. The Google Pack is a bunch of their tools rolled up into one download.

I have only looked around a little on the video section. No sense in it really with dial up. The google pack is okay but i prefer to pick and choose the programs I download, because of the special setup I have on my hard drive.

Let me know if any of you have used either of these features.

Lets start with a small timeline and some statistics.

Timeline

August 1996 : First Version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin's Google appears on Stanford University site.

September 1998: Google Incorporates in Menlo Park, Calif.

Early 1999: Red Hat becomes Googles first commercial customer

April 27th 2000: Wireless search for WAP phones and handhelds.

May 9th 2000: Google becomes the worlds largest search index with more than 1 billion pages; Yahoo! enlists Google as its search engine.

October 23rd 2000: AdWords sells advertising keyed to search items, soon becoming Google's primary source of income.

March 26, 2001: Dr. Eric Schmidt becomes chariman of Googles board of directors; later becomes CEO on August 6th. Unlike traditional CEO, to date he runs the company with founders Brin and Page, much to Wall Streets consternation.

July to August 2001: Google Image Search launches; Google Zeitgeists lists top search terms.

September 2001: A link to cached news articles about the 9/11 tragedies eventually becomes Google News.

October 2001: Google reaches profitability
December 11th,2001: Google adds searchable index of non-html files, such as PDF and MS Office documents.

March to April 2002: Google News Beta

December 2002: Froogle price comparison search engine released in beta.

January to February 2003: Acquisition of Pyra Labs, creator of blogger.

June 2003: AdSense service scans customer sites text and context, places related ads.

August 13th, 2003: Version 2.0 of Google Toolbar gets a pop-up blocker, making it derigeur for Internet Explorer users.

March 17th, 2004: Google Local shopping search engine

April 1, 2004: Gmail free Web-based email service beta, offering 1GB of storage, a unique filing system, and an invitation-only rollout mechanism.

April 29th, 2004: Google files for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commision; an unusual, idealistic letter to potential shareholders written by Larry Page warns Wall Street that google won't behave like a typical publicly traded company.

August 19th, 2004: Google becomes first Internet company to go public in three years; $85 a share climbs to $100 by day's end, and $108.31 the next.

October 14th, 2004: Google Desktop Search for local hard drives in beta.

December 14th, 2004: Google Print to offer full-text search of books from several prominent libraries.

January 25th, 2005: Google Video beta allows searches of several networks video clips using closed caption data.

March to April 2005: Google Maps allows combinations of satellite imagery mapping with search, opening up possibilities beyond the usual driving directions.

August 24, 2005: Beta launch of Google Talk, a new instant messaning and voice communication utility.

May 2005 Web Search Stats

Google 48%
Yahoo 21.2%
MSN 12.4%
AOL 4.5%
Other 13.9%

Google Searches Per Day (in millions)

Aug to Dec 1998 .01
Feb to June 1999 .5
Sept 1999 3.5
June 2000 18
Sept 2000 40
Dec 2000 60
Feb 2001 70
May 2003 200
May 2005 2,317

Most of my traffic is from Google searches.

same here, google has definately helped me out.

Google crawler is what accounts for 80% of hits to my sites....now I just need to get them to stay for more than 30 seconds.

They help people find my wallpapers x_x

What irony....I was doing this research on my own....turns out the group I'm in is doing a case study on Google. This study deals with business strategies etc...but that is kind of ironic.

Google has stuck to their word of keeping their home page simple....this may or may not hurt their other services...but i believe they figure if people want those other services they will look for them.

Google has a scholarship available for women that are looking into the field of CS.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/anitaborg/index.html

Here is the link for past recipients....

http://www.google.com/intl/en/anitaborg/profiles.html

Google ended trading on the stock market at $466.25....oh I wish i would have had money at the time to buy it when it was at its initial IPO of 89.

Click this link to find out what is in googles think tank...

http://labs.google.com/

More on the lawsuits on scanning the books.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20060125/1519218_F.shtml

Google Anti Spyware Project

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/26/2310204&from=rss

Google to take on iTunes

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/26/2126236&from=rss

More power to them...just more competition for the industry. Competition is most of the time good for the consumer.

Google goes Corporate

http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2006/01/30/google-search-internet_cx_ck_0130Googletoolbar.html?partner=rss

Google in the news today.....

http://news.com.com/Google+stumbles+with+first+earnings+miss/2100-1014_3-6033519.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/01/194234&from=rss
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060201/126254_F.shtml
http://news.com.com/2061-10811_3-6033949.html?part=rss&tag=6033949&subj=news

Googles stock has dropped for 4 days in a row....this was a direct impact of the earnings not hitting walstreets projections. (I don't know about the past two days because I have not tracked it. (2-1-06 was the last day i noticed)

I personally think people should stop putting so much emphasis on wallstreet projections. This is one reason companies are pushing the numbers so hard and not looking towards strategic visions.

Also google has made them mad by not doing things in the "traditional" manner. So they probably projected something so high it was very hard to achieve. Google did increase its sales something like 89% yet investing dropped. Shows you how much people just look at what Wallstreet says and they don't look at what the company has actually done.

Google has been having some trouble of late...

They missed earning expectations...and stock price fell...it is now starting to level out and go back up again.

They got a lot of flack about the chinese government censorship thing (they are not the only ones who bowed down. That is a big market and companies don't want to lose out on it. Google is in the fight with all the other companies to get the government to do something.)

Next they are starting to get hit by people in security areas....which was inevitable with the size they are now.

http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6041338.html?part=rss&tag=6041338&subj=news

(That source is from cnet...which means they are more on this side of Microsoft.)

I personally don't use that application for finding files on my computer. I use it for some other things. I would not get to uptight about it because it is a risk you take with most software that does that. Your every day files people probably wouldn't want to look at anyway.

Google to release Desktop 3 enterprise version...

http://news.com.com/2100-7355_3-6041848.html?part=rss&tag=6041848&subj=news

The bad news about google for the day involves an injunction for violating copyright policies.....

http://techdirt.com/articles/20060221/160231_F.shtml

:rolleyes:

Todays google articles....


All Googles Roads Lead to Kansas
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,70227-0.html?tw=rss.index

No Googling Perfect 10 nudes
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70260-0.html?tw=rss.index

Google China Network Nuetrality
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/22/233249&from=rss

Google.org to spend 1.1 million
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/02/22/2056206.shtml

Why There's Still Some Good News In Google's Perfect 10 Loss
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060222/1629246_F.shtml

Check this thread about Google to Digitize National Archives Footage

http://www.deadparrottavern.com/forum/showthread.php?p=184462#post184462

Check the below thread for Can Google be Google?

http://www.deadparrottavern.com/forum/showthread.php?p=184466#post184466

Analysts Are Seeking Guidance From Google

http://slashdot.org/articles/06/02/27/0012227.shtml

Check the below thread for "Googles Hiring Spree"

http://www.deadparrottavern.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10585

Check the below thread for "Justice apartment rejects Googles request"

http://www.deadparrottavern.com/forum/showthread.php?p=184600#post184600