mediajunk

The PageRank indicator on the Google toolbar has been grayed out, for all sites, since late on May 27th. Is this going to be an end of a significant phase in Google's -- and the web's -- evolution? Or are they just working on it? Rumours abound...

My own belief in the internet as a revolutionary technology has been strengthened in the years since the dotcom crash. I believe that those early internet startups didn’t “get it”. The internet is simply a new channel for squeezing money out of consumers; it is not another medium in which to advertise; and it is certainly not a virtual shopping mall.

I can relate to Google’s founders. They clearly believed, right from the beginning, that the internet offered the potential for radical social and cultural change. Thus their corporate mission soon became “to organise and make available the world’s information”. To change the world. Sound daft? Well, Google is changing the world, albeit in quiet, barely perceptible ways – from how drivers get directions to how kids do their homework.

The Google way of understanding the internet is reflected in its corporate culture. Before undertaking any new project, Google employees ask “how will it benefit the user”? From high-storage email to web accelerator utilities, users are always at the centre of Google’s thinking.

And so they should. A concern for users drives innovation. Had the primary concern of those who built the first steam locomotives been how many advertising messages they could emblazon on the side, the industrial revolution would never have happened.

Google strong focus on users is helping it to accelerate past all competitors, as its product suite grows in both breadth and innovation. Recent Google innovations include a satellite image version of Google maps and a new service whereby users will be able to upload, store and sell large video clips, and a web accelerator for speeding up your download times.

Recent acquisitions include the hugely impressive image management program, Picasa (now offererd as a free download), and the best web analytics package I’ve personally ever used, Urchin.

Of course, it may not seem good business sense to offer innovations for free – but these are new technologies, that involve changing user behaviours. And new user behaviours inevitably open up new business opportunities. Google’s Adwords wouldn’t be possible, for example, if Google’s search engine hadn’t been so useful, and become so popular. Adwords wasn’t something the founders envisaged when they started the company; now it is Google’s main source of revenue.

The revolution is happening. Google gets it. I try to.