10 years ago, my parents refused to believe
that there was this website called Hotmail.com offering
free e-mail service.
They thought it was impossible and likely a scam.
10 years today, everyone with Internet takes e-mail for granted.
The DotCom bubble is a thing of history, but the Internet
had truly revolutionized our lives.
Yahoo! improved upon Hotmail (MSFT's) offering
and bundled their e-mail with eGroups and Geocities and
wadeva not. For a time they were very strong.
Today they are in quite some trouble, all
because of this upstart which came along called Google.
Google took everything that there previously was
and made it 10 times betta. Google Search, Gmail,
now there's Google Chrome and Google Spreadsheets.
Google has become so bloody omnipresent in our lives
that it's close to indispensable.
Even this blog is hosted on Google servers.
By taking everything there was and making it so much betta, they essentially
spoiled the market and now sit firmly as the King of the Hill.
Technology being what it is, they could get displaced
the way they displaced Yahoo. But I think tt's unlikely,
becos of the scale and widespread availability (and hence indispensability)
it has created for itself. In fact, I think (and I cld be wrong),
tt the biggest threat to Google is not another startup but
an earthquake in California.
Fundamentally, a lot of my identity and Life revolves around Google.
Without it, almost everything Ive done over the past 5 years or so wld be impossible.
In some ways tho, i stil live in the Stone Age.
Despite its widespread ubiquity, i have never had a Facebook account.
Maybe im getting old-fashioned after all.
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