Why Is Google So Important?

Written by Owen Jones Saturday, 09 July 2011 11:22

Google has taken the world, especially the world of the World Wide Web by storm, there is no doubt about that and it just took them a decade or thereabouts to do it. Before the turn of the millennium, Google was a new nerdy toy - everyday surfers used Yahoo or, in America, AOL. There were other alternatives but serious surfers knew that the others were toys actually.

Google has taken the world, especially the world of the World Wide Web by storm, there is no doubt about that and it just took them a decade or thereabouts to do it. Before the turn of the millennium, Google was a new nerdy toy - everyday surfers used Yahoo or, in America, AOL. There were other alternatives but serious surfers knew that the others were toys actually.

Then came Google and it wiped the floor with AOL and, more recently, Yahoo as well. Google is the acknowledged master of Net search engines in the second decade of this millennium. You may think that is a good enough reason to explain why Google is so important. And why not?

However, there are other reasons why Google is so important. None of the other search engines empowered surfers to make any money except themselves. All the other search engines used all the knowledge from surfers' searches to empower and enrich themselves, whereas Google decided to give some back.

This concept, which was world-shattering at the time it was brought in, enabled anyone who could cobble together a web site, the capability of earning a few dollars or even a fortune. Worldwide! Anyone! Not merely Internet and computer-savvy students but anybody.

'All' they had to do was make a website, put some interesting content on it and a couple of snippets of code supplied by Google and hey presto! Anyone clicking on that advertisement earned the web master money.

We do not really know what percentage of earnings from clicks web masters get, but Google intimates that it is about fifty percent. You may think that this is fair or you might not, the fact is that some people in the world just earn a dollar or two for a hard day's slog, whereas anyone can earn a passive income from Google's Adsense.

'Passive income' in the sense that you compose an interesting series of articles, make them into a website, add Google's code, promote the website and you will earn an income for possibly years to come. That means that in theory, an African village farmer's child could earn much more than its parents.

The first time ever that this has happened and Google made it possible!

OK, Google is not a altruistic organization or at least it did not begin that way, but it's owners did have the foresight to comprehend that by sharing their earnings (or paying people to advertise them, whichever way you choose to look at it) would encourage web masters to advertise Google.

AOL and Yahoo must be kicking themselves for having been so greedy.

Anyway, that is why Google is so important. It is important because it created a new Internet business model that you can now see other companies trying to emulate. There are all sorts of companies, especially networking sites offering a few cents earnings for putting in work and there are also advertisers paying publishers of web sites who put their ads up too, but Google did it first and they are still the best.