EOTO Com Tech Timeline

 Ethan Parker 

9/8/21

There have been many different immaculate discoveries within technology overtime. These inventions and creations have in a way helped us in everyday life but some inventions have had a negative impact on our everyday lives. Google in my opinion is a very vital invented search engine on the internet because of the ability to prove they can provide high quality results to all users. Yes, Google has their positives but we must not forget the negatives either. 

The inventors of Google are very intelligent men. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the two founders of Google and they have a serious background to back up their intelligence. Larry Page studied computer engineering at Stanford University where eventually he met his co founder of the soon to come Google, Sergey Brin. Sergey Brin on the other hand is a computer scientist and entrepreneur. After the both of these founders met at Stanford University, they began working together and they eventually created a search engine that sorted pages on the web due to the popularity of the page. These two successful men were available to invent and officially publish their precious Google on September 4th, 1998. The overall mission and intent of creating Google was "to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful". 

Positives:

So why is Google so important? Google is very important and a very popular search engine due to the fact that Google generates a large variety of search results in a quick and short amount of time. Google collects and distributes information that it finds across the web. Google is the most popular search engine used in the world today and they beat out tough competitors such as YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook. Over 86% of the search market share uses Google as their priority search engine and there is a very little amount (close to none) of people in the world today that do not know about Google. Google not only is a great source for fast results, Google is also used for providing quick images, news websites, Google videos, and location services such as Google maps. Google has helped many people in the world across the lifespan of Google. Like I stated earlier, Google is the most used search engine and it is continuously helping people find needed resources daily. Many tend to only think about how Google is used for searching information, or facts only, but no, Google has many different roles when it comes to the searching options humans use everyday. 

Google has even added in features for the younger generation today. When looking up something you will notice two grey bars under the search bar. One grey bar stating "Google Search" and the other one stating "I'm Feeling Lucky". Well if you were to hover over the "I'm Feeling Lucky" grey bar it will switch to something that may state "I'm Feeling Adventurous" and you can click on this grey bar as it will take you to a Google game. The younger generation knows much more about technology than the older generation does so this is a great feature to add for those of the younger generation that will ultimately end up with more people using Google which is a win for Google as well as the younger generation certainly uses the Internet much more than the older generation does which means Google will be in usage much more because of the large percentage of the younger generation that uses Google on a daily basis. In the end, the younger generation is much more tech savvy than other generations and this leads to large use of Google as well as much more usage for others using Google because of the younger generation teaching those how to properly navigate through Google.

Google as we know makes finding information much easier as we know but Google can also help your company in a huge way. Google is a well-known and heavily used search engine that many different people use and look at daily, with that being said, there are various amounts of advertising opportunities for companies as they can pay to advertise on Google and maybe in return have many different customers shopping with their company. Google recognizes what we are looking up and say for example I am looking for a certain pair of sneakers and I look at this specific website to read about the sneakers and their benefits, Google may produce an ad that has to do with those sneakers or sneakers that are very similar. This helps the customer and researcher in many different ways because now they know more about the sneaker itself and can also find a place to purchase the sneaker due to the companies ad. In the long run, the company and the researcher/customer will both benefit but it is all because Google. Google was the search engine that realized what searches I was looking up and they lead me to the website as well as produced the ad that helped me tremendously. Google has certainly come a long way as they are also researching into driverless cars. This is mind blowing as Google is mainly just known for their quick results when looking for information online. The Google team is big on research and they know the benefits of self driving cars and are looking into developing their own. It is actually amazing what all Google has turned into and they will only continue to get better and increase their brand name.

Negatives:

Although Google has many positives and is a great search engine to use, Google also has its bad side. A long while ago, Google was pretty much just used for information and that'd be the end, people would find what they needed and get on with their day. As Google advanced and began using ads often, Google has began showing off their own ads more than they do the competitors. Google was strongly in favor of their products over more-specialized competition which was looked for much more often. This was soon looked at strongly and is the most recent lawsuit on Google in the past couple of years. This is not good because people who often shop online and look for certain companies products, that have been out much longer than Google product and persuasive ads, are now running into to an extreme amount of Google ads per search and they are not able to access what they want in the time they want. This is not good for Google as they will certainly lose many users to the difficulty navigating through all of the ads, this will result in less users which will untimely result in less revenue made for Google. 

Google is also known to be one of the most privacy seeking search engines there are. Google does not give any privacy to users as they have gotten in big trouble before for breaching customers privacy and trusts. First things first, Google tracks all of your searches and search history. No matter what you have cleared, nor what you have deleted, Google can access it somehow due to them having all of your searches stored. With the little information we know, Google could easily have your street address, your current location, your phone number, and credit car information all in one and it would not be surprising if they did, especially if you have done online shopping before. Google knows what accounts you use and oftentimes when you first login to a computer or laptop, Google will automatically log you in on Google based on the account you use most often or the account you were last logged in as. Yes many see this as helpful, but it is an extreme invasion of privacy. Google recently faced a huge lawsuit due to tracking billions of users and their internet browsers set in "private" mode. Due to this, Google has learned almost everything about many different users. They have learned about hobbies, friend, favorite foods, your most liked shopping sites, and embarrassing things you may want nobody to know. Google was fined at least $5 billion for "collecting information about what people view online and where they browse". It is quite scary for us that use Google often because they are virtually watching our every move and it is a complete invasion of our privacy. 

Google has gone through many different lawsuits and the last one I am going to discuss is the DOJ lawsuit. Google has engaged in making deals with phone companies such as Apple and Samsung to automatically set their default browsers to Google. The lawsuit also states how Google was using their dominance to make sure on android devices, all Google apps were already preloaded on the phones. Google is slowly trying to turn themselves into a monopoly. Nearly 90% of all internet searches go through Google and with what they are doing, they are pushing to make it 100%. This could be very bad for many different companies, specially companies that use Google to get their name out there. Google is participating in unfair practices to make sure their search engine is being used the most. Google used the large amount of money they were making to pay other companies to help block out competitors and help keep Google in the lead with a big name in the search industry. Google has been paying Apple billions per year to making sure they keep Google as the default browser on Safari on each Apple phone. The DOJ case is arguing that Google are using their anticompetitive practices to harm multiple groups. Groups being American customers who are practically forced to accept what is going on, advertisers who has to pay a specific amount to Google to reach their customers online, and tech companies who cannot get out from behind Google's huge shadow. These three groups are not able to pretty much do what they want are fight for what's right because of how powerful Google has become and if they aren't stopped soon, they will become a major monopoly. This case has been named the biggest antitrust case against a tech company since the one against Microsoft in 1998. After Google was pretty much caught and accused, they disagreed with everything that was stated and said that the lawsuits were completely false. In the end, Google is asserting their power unfairly and are looking to take over the search industry completely. 

In conclusion, Google for many can be seen as a great search engine or a very poor search engine and it all depends on how the searcher feels about Google and what all they honestly care about. Be careful when using Google as they are always watching, but enjoy the quick results and useful links Google has to provide for us anytime everyday.