Google controls the world...

There’s a saying by the founder of Unilever: "Half my advertising is wasted but I don't know which half". Nowadays targeted advertising is much more developed than in the era of the old media. Google is a good example of an enabler for this change. We can start thinking about the great amount of information that this company is able to handle: tastes and preferences of users, purchasing habits… So Google has the key to a much more predictable and useful marketing.

But Google ‘domination’ is not only that it is the world’s main info controller, the plans stated in the wall inside its Palo Alto offices clearly state that they plan to expand their tentacles even to the moon. In that way they’re switching from the digital world that made them almost mythical, to the analog ‘real’ world… Do you fear anything?

Today's library of Alexandria

One of the biggest undertakings of Google is to digitize the books and documents from the most important libraries around the world. This is in accordance with their vision of organizing all the information in the world and making it accessible. Today, only 15 % of the information worldwide is available on the internet, less than what you expected?

The application behind this is called “Google Book Search”. However this is a huge task and not free of complications. Imagine taking ancient printings and manage to scan and convert them into digital documents. But this is also an initiative that aims to give people in less developed countries the possibility to accede to information that maybe otherwise couldn’t because they don’t have a library close to them. And with a computer and a click, you can do it now. But you may think: how Google does business out of this, and are they entering traditional book sellers business? More than that, they’re re-directing traffic to their sites and all this is just quite aligned with their vision stated above. What is next for Google?