For 10 years all of us have had a common address—www. google.com

Ten years ago the world’s most famous search engine originated as a research project at Stanford University in California. Students Larry Page and Sergey Brin started out by nicknaming it BackRub then. Ten years later, people know it as the thing that changed their lives. It’s called Google. Although Brin has famously said, “We are currently not planning to conquer the world,” the engine, perhaps, couldn’t help doing exactly that. Mapping the way forward, under the slogan ‘Don’t be evil’, the Google guys touch lives without making a big deal about it.

A quick look at the Google products we use, perhaps with the same regularity as we brush our teeth, helps put things in perspective. Within search options there’s Alerts, Blog Search, Book Search, Chrome, Desktop Search, Earth, Finance, GOOG-411, Health, iGoogle, Images, Maps, News, Notebook, Patent Search, Product Search,

Scholar, Special Searches, Toolbar, Video, YouTube and Web Search. If you like to explore and innovate choose from the following; Code, Custom Search and Labs. Enabling communication are Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, Knol, Orkut, Picasa, Reader, Sites, SketchUp, Talk and Translate. For mobile phones, they have services like Maps for mobile, Mobile Mobile and SMS. Exhaustive, ain’t it?

Welcome to Google.com, the most important American invention, since Columbus discovered America itself. Thanks to it, India can take the credit for her Google Musician, Pritam. Lifting sound and rhythms has never been easier. However, for more original people like Luke Kenny, access to information has been everything. “Ten years ago, you would had to rely on magazines and TV shows to know what was on in the international music scene. Micheal Jackson was all that people knew. And now, any conceivable music you want is just a ‘google’ away. At the same time, it has made everything so short-lived. There is no curiosity or patience left any more. We want instant answers.” Copying things is easy but Kenny says that sooner or later one is invariably found out. Playwright Mahesh Dattani admits that he cannot do without Google at all. “It’s invaluable as far as I go. I back-up all my documents on Gmail so that I don’t have to carry a pen-drive while traveling,” he says.

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