What Would Happen If There Was No Google?

Google History

Can you believe it was 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on a search engine they initially called "Back Rub"? It was originally a college application working on servers at Standford University. They decided they didn't like the name "Back Rub" and changed it to Google. Google is a play on the word "googol". I know, I never heard of it either, but, googol is a mathematical term. It is used for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros

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Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, wrote a check to get Google started, in a garage in Menlo Park. Does that sound familiar? Didn't Apple start in a garage too? If you don't have a garage, maybe you should get one!

PC Magazine named the new Google to its Top 100 Web Sites for 1998. They were on their way and growing. As they say, the rest is history. To most of us, and I'm sure to the younger generation, it is hard to imagine a world without Google!

A world without Google?

I don't know about you but I use Google for just about everything. From research for writing articles to how to care for my plants. I check facts that I'm not sure about and look for information on different movie stars, actually, the list for me is almost endless. I Google a lot. Judging from Google's popularity, I know I'm not alone.

Sure there was a time when there was no Google, but there were Encyclopedias then. Remember them, encyclopedias? Volumes and volumes of thick books with useful information all in one place. They did, however, have their disadvantages because you had to wait for them to be reprinted and distributed before you could get the latest updates depending on their age, you could be reading not only out of date information but wrong information. You were always a little behind the times.

Blank Monitor

You could catch up on the news in the newspaper, but sometimes they were printed the day before and you weren't getting the latest report. Magazines, well most of them were monthly and a lot could happen in the month between their publication.

Without Google Map

When I thought about this, I had nightmares. A world without Google means a world without Google Maps! Imagine all the stranded travelers, who won't ask for directions, and have lost their way? Really, an eighteenth of an inch on an Atlas map is certainly not the same as "drive 1.5 miles and turn right"!

Encyclopedias

What about all those Google Images? The ease of finding so many images all in one place. You can use Images to find content related to images and its not just images, its photos, artwork and other images from all over the Web. What a loss that would be! We can only hope someone else would step up to the plate!

Google Chrome has all but knocked Internet Explorer out of the ballpark. Easy to use, with everything in one place, Chrome has become very popular too. Not to even mention Google+.

How Am I Supposed to Live Without You

What would happen if there was no Google?

So, what would happen if there was no Google? Well, library card catalogs would find an increase in usage because people would have to go the library again to get information! Research would take a lot longer because you could no longer do it in your home. Depending on where you live, it could take you anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to get to the nearest library. Heaven forbid, people would have to actually make an effort to get answers.

Okay, so there may still be other search engines. We might have to go back to Yahoo or any other number of search engines, but you wouldn't be able to "Google it"! Would you "Bing It"?

No Google

Wait, what about all the people who work at Google? What about all the companies that advertise on Google? It could be a financial implosion for them and the economy would take another hit.

So many writers and advertisers design their web pages so that the Google search bots will find them, rank them, and help get traffic to them. Could another site do it as well as Google? Well, there are times we want to strangle Google for its unrecognizable changes that affect page rankings, but on a whole we depend on it. In spite of it all, Google does drive traffic to sites it ranks well and that's every writer and web designers goal, more traffic. Remember though Google is not your only traffic source and its never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

Okay, if I haven't tweaked your interest yet, what about YouTube? Google owns YouTube. Imagine a world without the ubiquitous YouTube! No more laughing babies, nor more cute little animals, no more ridiculous people doing ridiculous things before your very eyes, no more cultural or theatrical videos, really. I don't know about you, but I'd miss YouTube, even it was just for the laughs and music.

Respect

Someone said, "there were smart people before Google and there will be smart people after Google". I like that on many levels. One being people like Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney didn't even have computers, never mind the Internet or Google, and look what they did. Another, because nothing is forever. Once every good home had a complete set of encyclopedias, how many have them now? Once everyone who owned a desktop owned an IBM desktop computer, how many own them now? One people walked around with little transistor radios to listen to music on the go, have some of you ever even heard of transistor radios? Once Yahoo was the search engine of choice, need I say more?

We are in a constantly changing world and even Google could change or go away. So the question "What would happen if there was no Google" is relatively simple to answer, life would go on, another search engine would take over and another company would become the number one go to place on the Internet. What do you think?