Seeing my Google Account dashboard made me realize how much I depend on Google:

image

 

A few thoughts came to mind:

  • Google sets the bar very high. They provide high quality products (mostly for free), amazing feature-sets (Google Analytics amazes me), and they always provide a great user experience. It’s very rare that I’ve seen errors in a Google application

 

  • Many Google products are a product of acquisitions. It’s amazing how so many acquired products can be re-factored, seamlessly integrated, and branded to become part of the Google product-line.

 

  • I consider the successes of Google a lesson for me and others in Consulting. If we strive to set the bar as high as Google, we can have a dramatic impact on our clients and build great solutions.

 

I’m only using a small subset of Google applications. Look some of the other applications that are available:

image

 

Not to mention the new applications that are always being developed in Google Labs:

image

 

Google’s contribution to the explosion of the Internet is as important as Microsoft’s contribution to the explosion of Personal Computing. Google will continue to build great applications and constantly raise the bar to provide end users with amazing options.

My first memory of Google applications raising the bar (Aside from Google Search) was on June 30th, 2004 when I observed Microsoft raise the Hotmail mailbox limit from 2MB, YES, 2 MB!! to 250MB!