Google is the internet leader. Through its various services, it caters to internet needs of most of the population of the world, on a daily basis. Let’s take a closer look at its world and what it’s made of, so we can better understand the differences between Google, Google Chrome and all the other services it offers internet users.
Google: The Name of the Company and an Entry Point to All You Need on the Internet
Google is first and foremost the name of the company based in the Silicon Valley (USA). It was created in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergei Bryn, and its original objective was to act as a search engine. Therefore, when you only talk about Google, without mentioning any other services with it, you are talking about the search engine itself. If you type in you address bar, on any web browser: www.google.com, you will be sent to this search engine and you’ll be able to look for any page available on the internet. However, it will bring you the ones it considers the most interesting for you, based on a complex algorithm; a very secret and private intellectual property of the company.
But you can also access the Google search engine by using another product of the company: Google Chrome. It is a web browser, just like Explorer, Safari and Mozilla. It provides you access to the information which can be found on the World Wide Web. It possesses unique qualities that make it more interesting for people to use, such as its capacity to translate all web pages in the language of your choice. It also enables you to gain access directly to all their other applications, with a link found at the right top corner (a block made of nine dots).
A Quick Take-over of the Market
You may not remember this, either because you are too young or simply for the fact that the others disappeared into obscurity, but Google was not the first search engine. There were others like Altavista. But Google had their views set on conquering the world, right from the beginning, and within two years they had already done so. We should have understood their vision through the choice of their name. It comes from the Gogol number (10^100). They explained their choice by saying that they were going to manage tons of information, by processing and categorizing them. And they did.
After their first year of operation, they were already responding to over three million internet searches on a daily basis. By 2000, you could access over one billion pages through the Google search engine. Today, who knows how many there are, but if you need to look for something particular or out of the ordinary, you will either find it on Google or you won’t find it anywhere else either. The fact is, this part of the company is so strong, that when people talk between each other about looking-up something online, they use the term “Google it.”
Other Products in the Google Family
August 2015 saw the opening of a company called Alphabet. In theory, this company was supposed to take over the various products and services that Google offered. However, it did not finalize itself exactly that way. It became a specialist of advertising run through the Google search engine. It is also in charge of the Gmail accounts and other internet based products. But you still have all the others subsidiary which are independent of Alphabet.
This is one of the most popular services that Google offers. The first 15GB of storage space is actually free, so many people use it to keep pictures and various documents for which they don’t have space on their PC, or simply to keep a copy, in case something happened to their hard drive or external disk.
For professionals, Google Drive is a great way to share documents and information with colleagues anywhere around the world. You can modify a document (Word, Excel, etc.) directly on the Drive and the changes will be seen by all who have access to it. You can also share folders on your Google Drive with anyone else who has a Google account.
This has become one of the most important evolutions of Google. It permitted them to access households in a unique way. Through a speaker, anyone with the device in their home can access the Google search engine through their voice. You just have to ask a question and it will answer you. And if you try to be cheeky with it, it may snap back at you!
We could go on for pages, writing about Gmail, YouTube, Android and so many other Google properties. Now, at least you know that Google and Google Chrome are two different things. And if you want to learn more on the company, head to their search engine and just ask!