Google: A Model for the Future?

If someone (other than a math major) today read the word “googol” in a paper or on a sign, they would most likely shrug their shoulders and laugh at the uninformed person who misspelled Google, the wellspring of information portals. Yet the Google enterprise based its name off of that word; a mathematical term for 1100. Now the word Google has morphed into a proper noun, a word that spell check capitalizes; the word brings up images of a white screen with the blue, red, green and yellow letters informing one that he or she has arrived at the fountainhead of search portal destination.
Google’s mission is a unique one: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/). From their foundation till today, their focus hasn’t changed; Google is still dedicated to their users. Google has set up Google Chrome to make searching ever simpler and Google Books, in order to digitize information that is not yet available on the web. Google is doing all it can think of to make its search engine faster, simpler, and more effective to its users.
Google is also unique in its advertising technique: Google set up its site so that advertisers bid for their ads to be attached to certain keywords in an open auction, thus making the ads on Google pertinent to the individual’s searches. Google has also opted to separate their search results from the ads of sponsoring companies by putting the two categories under separate headings – making it easier to find what one is looking for directly without having to sift through a myriad of ads.
Not only does Google make searching simple, it also aids in social networking and long distance communication/cooperation. Gmail and Google Docs are set up to benefit collaboration between people in various geographical areas by allowing everyone in a certain group to work on the same set of data via these Google applications. Google is dedicated to be the most user-friendly, fast, and most available information portal that it can be – in fact, one of Google’s “Ten Things” is “it’s best to do one thing really, really well”, which is reflected in their success as a search engine.
Google believes that “you can make money without doing evil” and that “democracy on the web works” – Google strives to develop and improve its site in all aspects without doing injury to its users or compromising its mission statement (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html). Google’s new outlook of businesses attempting to cater to individuals’ needs and attempting to aid the customer to the greatest extent possible is becoming the goal of a growing number of companies.
This may change consumerism and the economy in the next ten years from one of attempting to get the consumer to need or want the product a company is selling to attempting to make a product that a consumer wants or needs. Companies may shift their focus towards making products geared toward individual interests and needs – custom-made products may become the common commodity. One never knows what the future may bring, but Google seems to be paving the way towards a more client friendly version of economics and consumerism.