Google. Searching and beyond.

You know you have made it in life when the adjective for the task is now your businesses name.

This has happened with a very select few companies  “I’ll just google it”, “Where is the hoover?“, “That velcro sure is sticky!” … seriously, where is the hoover? For those of you who are interested (probably not many) the correct terms for the above are search, vacuum cleaner and HOOK AND LOOP FASTENER respectively. No one says hoop and loop fastener.

Another interesting fact is that the name Google is a play on the “googol” which refers to the mathematical term for the number 1 with 100 zeros after it apparently reflecting Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s appetite to organise the seemingly endless amount of data on the internet and try to make it accessible to everyone. When recently asked at a TED event whether he thought he had managed this Larry replied “…we’ve been at it for 15 years and it’s not at all done”.

To many people, google is page to which they can access other internet sites they want. Often peoples first stop will be to type in google.com into there web browser or, even further than this, will be many peoples homepage. An organised and trusted door to the confusing, vast universe of the world wide web. It’s a very complex tool which has been made simple to use. This is the genius of google. My grandpa, who could be fairly described as an internet beginner intuitively knows how to “google” something. However the further down you dig in this modern phenomenons website the more you realise its amazing potential. Highly advanced analysis can be carried out using google analytics. Google have qualifications which can be gained by learning their systems to a sufficient standard. This willingness for people and businesses to pay to show that they are proficient in using the companies services pay huge testament to what a success this company has been. Going from a start up business to a company which people want to be associated with so much that they are willing to pay to show that they are knowledgeable about it is quite a feat.

Google phones, Google glass, self driving cars (which have driven over 100,000 miles unassisted thus far in testing) and more recently Google Deepmind. Google Deepmind is possibly the next big step for google systems and the idea behind it could exponentially increase our development. Its tagline is “solving intelligence”. This is a big concept but one that Larry Page speaks of as the aim of Google. Machines that are capable of learning as they go through algorithms . This of course has very exciting but also slightly worrying potential outcomes. For better or worse, true artificial intelligence may not be as far away as you may think. In 2000 Google released an April fools day prank announcement of “MentalPlex” – Google’s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. 14 years later it seems as though the prank may be coming true.