Technology is a funny thing. It can provide novelty to the masses and have an entire generation playing video games which is made possible only due to the desires of the masses and now gaming has become a recognized sport and it’s entirely possible to make a living as an e-sports professional, but most gamers are still relatively casual but that doesn’t mean that the industry isn’t rich with various different types of games, hosted on various different types of servers. For instance, the open ended world of Minecraft has spawned so many different variations of the game. What started off as a sandbox game has given way to lists and lists of minecraft servers all hosting different types of games, spanning into sub-genres of their own, from MMORPGs to survival modes. It’s amazing how something can spark a chain reaction and develop into something with a life of its own.
The very basis of technology was to provide convenience and solutions, but it has gone on to grow and become an entity with the power to shape user behavior. Communication had undergone some of the biggest evolutionary processes, from hand-written letters that could take months to arrive, to being able to speak face to face through a screen. How has that changed the way we communicate? We can talk to whomever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want. It has changed our communication behaviors drastically. Instead of calling upon someone for a visit, we’re calling without a moment’s notice and can also keep several streams of conversations and discussions alive all at the same time. Technology is without a doubt, a boon gifted to us by great innovators and inventors who were able to visualize a world of great accessibility and ease.
Children in rural areas can now learn via online classes, employment opportunities have also abounded, and with it cloud computing has come alive to facilitate the growing needs of an increasingly digitized space. The remote workplace has been growing on its own for years now, even before the pandemic hit, but lockdown restrictions have definitely helped the industry skyrocket. With billions of people locked at home with no way of making a living, they turned to the internet, and the internet responded in kind, providing platforms to make the transition to working from home much easier.
Many of these platforms were already established, but they were able to evolve to meet the new standards of working professionals. One of these companies is Google.
In 2008, Google released a developer tool that gave developers the ability to run applications on Google’s infrastructure. This was the stepping stone towards Google’s cloud services and platforms. It gave the company an opportunity to explore and branch out, or test the waters in a sense, before they finally committed in 2011 and today it has become the go-to for almost every industry. Whether you’re a large international corporation like PayPal, Bloomberg, Airbnb, or if you’re a freelancer working odd jobs on Upwork, you will have used one of Google’s cloud products at one point or another. For the former, Google is the official vendor for those companies.
While AWS might seem like it’s on top in the grand scheme of things, it’s Google services that is omnipresent. We use their web browser and their online tools, all of which are inextricably linked to its products – today if you lose your password to your Gmail account, you will be able to retrieve your password on your Youtube app, provided that you’re logged in. Google is providing a seamless user experience on its platforms and is easily integrated for every purpose.
Google provides the same kind of functionalities that Azure and AWS has and their A.I. technology, including their big data analytics, and machine learning initiatives are helping them stand out. What started off as a search engine has now become a household name. People have even adopted the use of “Google” as a verb. Ever hear your friends say, “Let me Google that”?
Even the way that we’re exploring the world is different now. People are using Google Maps to plot out their journeys and even using street view to visit the world. This kind of virtual travel would never have been even thought of if the internet didn’t take off the way it did.
Now people store pictures on their Google Cloud storage and developers have an outlet for their creativity and applications, and G Suite is something that everyone uses and its productivity apps like Google Docs have more or less replaced traditional Microsoft Word. Being software and cloud reliant has made us more efficient on a whole when it comes to collaborating, and that’s what the digital space is moving us towards.
