While people are all getting excited over Google+ (hopefully Google's new Facebook killer), here's my countdown of the 5 most revolutionary Google products so far:
Honourable mention: YouTube
YouTube doesn't count for the list as it was well known before Google acquired it. No doubt, videos of cats and Rick Astley have changed the internet forever. But even now, it remains an arm's length from other Google products through branding. And I could think of 5 other important innovations...
5. Adwords
Google invented adverts that didn't annoy its users. The adverts are typically useful and not distracting. Not to mention being the source of revenue for Google's vast empire.
4. Docs
Docs was originally powered by some Google acquisitions, but Google made it their own and popularised it. Taking Office applications to the cloud is thought of as a Google thing.
3. Chrome
Chrome has hit 20% market share today, under 3 years since its announcement. A sizeable feat in an already competitive market (Firefox was slowly eating into IE at the time). But the key revolution Chrome sparked was making browsers faster, more secure and putting tabs at the top. IE and Firefox have had to up their game and copy Google design decisions.
2. GMail
Free web mail accounts used to have storage limits of 2-10 Mb. GMail blew that away with fast, searchable, 1Gb accounts. Also cool is that they made dots optional in email addresses. So experts.exchange@gmail.com can double up as expert.sex.change@gmail.com, all in the same inbox.
1. Search
Google made bookmarks nearly obsolete. You could actually find good content quickly on the internet. We easily forget just how hard this was PG (pre-Google). Remember web circles? Remember link sites on a topic that would send you to 20 other sites on a topic, half of which would also be lists of links? Google made the internet work.
What did I miss?
Android, Calendar, Translate, Books, Scholar? What deserves to be here that I haven't included?
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