Around the Net
Google's Road to Ubiquity
- The Washington Post, Wednesday, November 14, 2007 11 AM
Google's recent moves-OpenSocial, Android and the Open Handset Alliance, and enhancements to Google Maps and its Gmail email service-indicate the Web giant is on the path to ubiquity. The
company wants all Internet users to do everything online, and store everything they do online, from sharing digital pictures to creating spreadsheets.. The company calls it "cloud computing," which
refers to the ready accessibility of Google's vast database of information from any device, anywhere across the globe.
Google wants its users to always be connected, so it can
constantly send relevant advertisements their way, all day. The so-called "cloud" might seem like a win-win situation, but Yankee Group analyst Jennifer Simpson warns that some users will be leery of
handing over so much information to one company.
Ubiquity has been Google's ultimate goal for some time. Yet many of the products the company released never took off. Gmail, for example, still lags badly behind Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail. Orkut, the social network, only became popular in Brazil and India. And one wonders what ever happened to Google Base, the Web giant's purported Craigslist-killer.
