There is hardly any computer or mobile phone user untouched by Google in the past decade.
Be it Gmail , Maps , YouTube , Android or the ubiquitous Google search box , most of us can’t imagine life without the google products.
To top it, no one pays a Google bill !
Today we take Google Maps for granted , to get the directions to reach a place ,to look for a restaurant nearby or simply to know where you are at a particular time while travelling. It is such a recent phenomenon and yet it makes you wonder how you got along earlier before Google Maps came into being.
“Never Lost Again” by Bill Kilday is the story of the evolution of Google Maps. I say evolution and not development as these kind of projects do not follow a rigid plan but take their own course depending on a plethora of factors like hardware capabilities, state of economy, availability of funds, Marketability of intermediate products and by-products and of course chance happenings.
No doubt Americans are great innovators. An average american is unfettered by too many cultural Dos and Don’ts and dares to attempt what appears impossible. While in fields like Automobiles, aviation, Pharmacy or Domestic appliances the improvements are incremental, in the field of information technology it is real magic ,particularly so after the advent of Internet or simply the NET.
Before the Iphone, who would have thought of multi touch access or pinching an image to zoom in or zoom out ? Who would have thought of accessing dynamic , global maps through a pocket size device ? Even now I feel , sheer magic it is !
Perhaps there is not one company at the Silicon Valley that deliberately planned and developed such devices or technologies. It is a convergence of technologies related to Maps, satellite imagery, gaming, search engines all evolving independently to create the great user experience that we are seeing today.
Google Maps as we know today is a convergence of Smartphone Operating System, Database applications, Digital Mapping, Satellite imagery and Search Engine Algorithms.
In the period 1995-2005, a number of start ups shot up funded by Venture Capitalists. Most of them folded up due to lack of funds and a a few survived. It does not mean that the survivors were the very the best in the business as there were so many factors other than technology that decided who would survive.
Fortunately or unfortunately, in the field of IT, the rule is “winner takes all” . You can be never sure if the good guy has won. In the OS war, Windows along with Internet Explorer emerged victorious in the 90s and the issue is very much debatable if life of a PC User would have been better had someone else won. (As I am writing this I just got a report of a Windows 10 Crash from a friend. ) Of course , any system can crash but I generally find a kind of helplessness with windows users when their system does not behave in the way they expect it to.
Never Lost Again is the story of a company called Keyhole , a provider of digital maps to its subscribers over the internet. The story is narrated as seen through the eyes of a marketing man ; one who calls himself a Product Manager and a Product Marketing Manager, both rolled into one.
So you learn more about financial, legal and marketing challenges than about technology . In a way this makes it a more interesting read. Who wants to read about algorithms and image formats ? Yes, lot of complex processes are absurdly simplified but it keeps the interest alive for a layman ;for eg “Stitching up images into a mosaic to be streamed through a server ” definitely sounds better than “separating luma signal and chroma signal and using advance video codecs to compress “
Be that as it may, the trials and tribulations that a start up team undergoes is fascinating and awe-inspiring. I feel entrepreneurs are more successful in US than elsewhere as there, it is okay to fail. They take more risks or to put it in baseball idiom, they take mighty swings with gay abandon and once connected end up with huge hits !
Out of all the IT companies, Google definitely stands out as unique as they aimed at great user experience rather than profits. The Keyholers (Keyhole Company emplyees) once merged with Googlers on acquisition, noticed that in Google nobody talked about revenues, break-even point etc. They solely went after great user experience which they achieved to the full extent ; and the dollars followed them automatically.
It is absolutely incredible that after burning millions of dollars to create Google Maps and Google earth, they just gave it away for free and yet made up for this loss on revenues from sheer brand value of Google and revenue from other products .
In his letter to Shareholders Google Co founders warned the investors that it was not a conventional company to focus on wealth creation for shareholders. Yet the market continued to reward the shareholders with huge profits year after year.
Today the google products , beside the well known Google toolbar include Gmail, You-tube, Google docs, Google-drive, Photos, Translate, News ,Books etc covering every aspect of personal computers. It is not exaggeration to say that all your computer needs are fulfilled just by a laptop running on Linux OS and a reliable WIfi connection. There is absolutely no need for any other software like windows or MS Office, and it’s all on the cloud and it’s all for free to use . Who says there’s no free lunch ?!
Trivia
The geeks may not go after profits but they sure do put their signatures on their products. I use Debian OS ; which user of the OS can forget the name of the creator Ian and his girlfriend Deborah.
Recently I learnt ,Android was created by Andy Rubin !