Episode: 2167
Title: HPR2167: Google It
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2167/hpr2167.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:11:34

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This is HPR episode 2,167 entitled Google It.
It is posted by first-time Post-NFMN1 and is about 19 minutes long.
The summary is discussing some of the successes Google has done despite people thinking Google is failing.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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All right, welcome to the Get Tech podcast. I am your host Bill Miller. This is my first podcast I've ever done, so bear with me.
This first episode I really want to hit on a subject that everybody seems to be talking about lately and that is Google.
Google for better for worse is a really huge company.
But for summarizing out here in podcast line, we seem to think that we know everything how Google should run their business.
And we'd be more successful at it that they just listen to what we had to suggest.
I seem to think a little differently.
I think that Google has done a great job.
No, they've not had a perfect job.
I mean, they've had a perfect record.
They've had some screw ups. They've had some failures.
But that comes with companies.
But today I really wanted to highlight some of the successful stuff Google has done and we seem to forget about.
So let me start there.
First thing I want to do is Google search.
Google search is the term googling is because of Google search.
If you say just Google it, everybody knows what that is.
So the term googling has become synonymous with online searching for that reason.
The company was able to burst onto the scene, the search scene, in the late 90s by providing search results that were quick and relevant.
The late 90s.
So even if you were to say 98, you're talking almost, you know, 98, 208, 216.
You're talking almost 20 years ago if you go by the late 90s.
It's a major, major thing.
20 years of search that these guys have dominated.
The engine has only gotten smarter with new features like Google now.
Obviously, and Google assistant, the voice search funding answers is getting easier than ever.
The next thing is going to be Gmail.
Like most of us, I think everybody I know uses Gmail.
Very few people do I know not use Gmail.
I was lucky enough that I had a friend who has got onto the beta test program right when it first came out and he sent me an invite.
So I've been using Google Mail since it's pretty much its inception back in 2000 something.
I forget what it was, but stopped using Yahoo Mail because it stopped using my pop three accounts.
I used to have websites, different websites for gaming that I had my own email through and I even stopped using those because Gmail was just that much easier.
The spam filtering was out of this world where my Yahoo Mail I had to switch out or my hotmail if you know those.
We had to switch out every six months because it'd be so full of spam mail you can stand at them where you had to get a new one and tell everybody a new email address.
But Gmail, like many Google products, Gmail started out as an invite only application released in 2004.
Gmail offered a then unprecedented one gig of free space for users and allowed for attachments up to be 25 megabytes per email, which back then was pretty massive for the time.
As of today, it is the most popular web-based email provider with over 400 million active users.
So that's pretty major. Think about it. 2004, it's 2016. That's 12 years that Gmail has been the email client.
Next thing I'm going to say is Chrome. Google Chrome is another one. Who doesn't use Google Chrome?
I know a lot of my Linux brethren like to use Firefox. I can't stand Firefox somewhere after it slowed down.
I just got to the point where I can't use it anymore. It doesn't have the features alike.
Maybe it's because I've gotten used to Chrome. But for me, the Chrome browser is just, you know, the BL end all.
Google's Chrome Red browser was launched in 2008. So now it says, again, this is 2016. So you're talking eight years ago.
And since then has eaten up 40% of the world's browsing market share, not the United States, the world's browser market share.
The browser gave users a snapier web surfing experience, a ton of awesome extensions, which I use a ton of them as it is.
And I pushed Microsoft's Internet Explorer edge and Firefox and Mozilla Firefox to step up their game, which they haven't gotten to yet.
So for me, Chrome is still a major player. And the only one I really use. I try other ones out. Opera mini. They just never seem to add up.
Next thing on the list is the Chromecast. Now if you're like me, the Chromecast is probably the one thing that I use a ton of.
I have five of them in this house. Every TV has one. Why? Because they work.
When I want to watch something on a TV from a phone, a tablet, a laptop, I can just send it to it and it instantly goes there.
You don't have to fight with it. It's easy to set up. It will stream pictures in the background. It'll play your music for you.
It just really is a great little device for $35. One of the best $35 I ever initially spent. So I've got other ones as well.
I've got the team gone hundreds of T1000s here for you who makes them the MK T1000s. No one here to quality. No one here.
Senator Pichai talked of the Android platform success adoption in years. The interesting device I got attention that year was Google's casting dongle, the Chromecast.
And the use numbers are huge. Over 40 million sold.
$14 million. 35 dollars a piece. 40 million. Do the math.
We all know that the Chromecast is still growing in user base. And the numbers of apps for the dongle is continuing to grow as well.
Expanding from 5, 7, 9, and 10 inch displays all the way up to 50 and above.
To show the best content that there is. We expect a newer version, which is the 4K coming out here or it's actually out now.
A newer software to update the Chromecast. Keep the download timeless and ready for cast whenever it is plugged in all the apps, things like that.
So like I said, can't compete with anything else. The Chromecast is a great item.
Next thing is that Chromebooks. Chromebooks started out as a joke. They were like just above a netbook and everybody talks about Chromebooks.
I still kind of get it from people who are like, well, a Chromebook doesn't do what a real paper does. I kind of have this and that.
Well, those people you'll never have anything for because they don't use it anyway. They're like, I'm going to have my Adobe Photoshop.
I don't know anybody who uses Adobe Photoshop. Rarely do I know people who use it. I mean, real estate photographers use it more than anybody.
And anybody who does it has a Mac anyway. My DSLR, I don't even use Adobe Photoshop. I use LightZone and I use a couple other programs to do it.
And I don't have to use it. So my Chromebook. You're going to get back on track. Chromebooks are a super viable thing.
They have gotten super powerful because what do they do? They run. What are they based on? They're based on Linux. Why fight it?
You know, everyone complains about a Chromebook, but it's a Linux-based thing. You should love it. You should go, oh, wow, it's a Linux-y thing.
Whether it's cloud-based, what's the difference? I mean, we ran the dongles and live CDs for years. That's not the same thing.
The only difference is that once it turned off, it was off. Chromebooks. Google's low-cost Chromebooks outsold Apple's range of maps for the first time in the US this year.
While the IDC doesn't typically break out when those versus Chromebook sales, IDC analysis, Linhahn, confirmed. I hope I got that name right. The milestone to the to the verge. I'm using this actually as a quote from the verge.
Last, overtook Mac OS in the US in terms of shipments for the first time in Q1 2016.
Now, they say that also Chromebooks are still basically school-based, you know, for schools US-K12 story, you know, a success story, but everybody I know has them.
I suggest them to everybody who's especially like older parents who aren't computer savvy. The Chromebook is just great. They can turn it on, it fires right up.
They don't take anything to do. That's where it about updates. Everything's not taking it to Chrome browser, you're in it.
Other than major AAA games, there's not anything you can't do to Chromebook. The days are where, oh, we can't do this offline. That's bullshit. It just doesn't happen.
You can get almost every app you want offline as well as online. Google Docs is offline. There's offline games. You can read stuff offline.
The whole thing that it's got to be an online thing all the time is a fallacy now. Chromebooks are a great device, and especially at the price.
You can get a decent Chromebook for about 300 bucks, and it will do everything that a $1200 Mac and PC will do for, you know, and do it better. It'll do it faster.
The only thing I would say on a Chromebook is get four gigs around. Only because you've got multiple browsers open.
If you're one of these people that have 80 browsers open, get four gigs around. I don't have 80 browsers open. I don't need four gigs around. The two gigs works fine.
I can open up 20 browser windows and it never fails. So if you've got to have it, get the four gigs out of that. They're a great deal.
The next thing I'm going to talk about is the Google Drive. Now, if you're like me, since I've found out about Google Drive, I use it for everything.
I mean, all my docs go up there, my spreadsheets go up there. I don't use Microsoft Office anymore because of it. Everything I do is pretty much through that.
It's a great, great, great thing. Google Drive gives you just cloud-based stores to save, upload, and create documents, spreadsheets, presentations from the comfort of their browsers all for free.
I didn't mention that. Most of the stuff on this list is also going to be free. This figure says, been so popular that Google has tripled user storage capacity from the initial five gigs to 15 gigs.
One drive by Microsoft couldn't even top that. I think they had to drop you back to one gig or five gigs if I'm not mistaken because they couldn't handle the pressure.
Google's still giving us 15 gigs per person per account and you can have multiple accounts. I know because I have four or five of them.
The fact that it integrates with Gmail is icing on the cake as well. So there you go. If you need to save documents, if you need to collaborate, the collaboration is awesome.
Three or four people, five people can work on the same document at the same time. That way it's not sending emails. The one thing that used to be horrible is when you step to send emails out to everybody.
You would send the email out. You have to wait for the replies. You have to wait for the edit it.
They can just look at it while they're in their Google Drive, edit it while you're in it. You'll see them in their editing. It's perfect. It really is one of the best things I've ever gotten.
On top of that, now it's photos. Now, as a photographer, I love photos. I have probably 25,000 photos up already.
According to Google, over 200 million people use Google Photos per month, 200 million.
Dimension, this is another free service. They've collected over 106 billion animations from users, as well as 14 petabytes of data.
They've crunched some more numbers and suggested that it would take one person over 420 years to scroll through all of the pictures in their database.
They've also added over 2 trillion different labels for files, and it probably wouldn't surprise you that over 10% of those tags were just for selfies.
I know awesome thing. If you have a camera, automatically uploads them to Google Drive. I can edit them while they're up there.
Now, it's not Photoshop. It's not LightZone. But you know what? If I need to do some basic editing, cropping, things like that, it's perfect for it.
I do that most of the time. I go put them up there. I can upload them. Put my phone down. It'll automatically upload them by the time I go back and pick my phone up. They're usually already all uploaded.
Nice and easy. Camera's the same way. It has a Wi-Fi connection that when I get into the house, and I'm actually starting sending them up for me.
Another free product. That in Drive, if you need bigger space as well, they'll give it to you. It costs you a little bit more money.
I think it's a dollar for 100 gigs on Google Drive. I don't know what photos is. But yeah, for dirt money, you can definitely get an expanded storage.
So it's definitely worth it. And again, another free product.
Now, the main one to Google that we all use is Android. Another free product. The Holly customizable mobile operating system was released back in 2008.
So now it is eight years old. Eight years old that Android has been out and has been free of the whole time.
At that time, many people doubt that Google's Android could compete with Apple's iOS. But five years later, Android had roughly 80% of the smartphone market.
Google's mobile iOS has also been submitted for not only smartphones, but tablets, wearable computing devices and cars.
And as you know, we all love Android. People complain that they wanted a vanilla Android experience.
And that's all I ever hear them complain about. And then they give it to them in the Pixel and they complain about this too simple.
Also, but I digress, but yeah, they complain when they have it, they complain when they don't have it. So.
But Android, another free item that they put on phones, it's changed everybody's life coming to Chromebooks as well in the near future.
So you'll be able to do your Android apps on the Chromebook as well as on your phones and your tablets.
Google search also made it onto your iPhones. Obviously Google did such a great job at search that even their competitors Apple had to put them on their phones.
There's a talk about being replacing Google, but it still hasn't panned out for them.
Maps is another one another free item. Maps is not only on Android phones, but a Apple's another one I had to take it because why because their Apple maps didn't cut it.
Apple's map services the number one map application using for today's multiple reasons.
Tief among them is that it's accurate offers a number of different route options spanning a wide variety of transportation means.
It's been updated to add in restaurants, gas stations, trip times, speed limits on things. So I mean, if any of your old like me and you lived in California,
I don't know how many of us have had turned to a Thomas guide to figure out where we were going or printed out pages and pages of maps to get us to a destination.
But then days are over when Google Maps came out and it completely changed the game. My Tom Tom went into the yard sale and I haven't looked back.
So another free thing that Google does via maps is maps. I'm sorry and it's it's awesome.
Next thing is YouTube though YouTube was not a an original product by Google. They bought it and they pretty much bought it when it started out.
YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees and subsequently acquired by Google for the following year.
It provided to be one of the best acquisitions Google has ever made and now generates over one billion unique visits per month.
Now that also generates cash for people who are on there. I think Pewdiepie and all those other people on YouTube making money and all the money Google makes.
I would say that's a very very very successful entity owner another item that is free.
Now they do have a paid version which I looked into I had it for about four months the YouTube read and it wasn't bad.
I love the fact that you could stream something on your phone and then like if you had couldn't watch it you could just press the button to screen off and you could still listen to it.
Which was nice. That was the one thing I really used it for. The no ads is nice as well. You don't have to deal with ads on stuff.
But the main thing was just the screen. Now there's apps I have that do that for me.
But I stopped using YouTube rep not because it wasn't any good but I think it was just a little too expensive for what it does.
I think the $9.99 a month is a little more than I want to spend on that. It's not Netflix. It is not you know playstation view whatever the other services are.
It's a little much at $9.99. If it was less than five bucks I would jump on it. It's getting better.
It's got originals and stuff but it needs to mature a little bit more before it's worth the $9.99.
But overall still a good service and another free item that Google has given us. Also the partnerships have helped them grow as well.
The first Android device HC dream debuted in 2008. But Android didn't really take on until 2009 when Verizon wireless gave the mobile droid motor role of droid.
The marketing push needed to create lesions of Android fans, which you remember all the joy commercials.
The agreement tree in Google and Verizon has led to numerous successful Android phones catapulting Google's mobile platform ahead of Apple's iPhone and sales.
Even if you hate Verizon like I do and I have to use them every day, you still know that that's pretty much a true statement.
Google Cardboard, yeah very much to say Google Cardboard is probably the cheapest way to experience 3D immersion that there is out there.
And one of the funnest kids love it. It's an easy one to do if you're like me. I love getting the little goggles and testing them out.
So I get one or two pairs in every month and test them out everything that are Cardboard to plastic. I have Samsung Gear VR's.
I have the few masters. I even looked at one here just recently at Bass Pro Shops. They have one in there and I've got Cardboard ones and other ones as well. Chinese knockoffs and I love these things.
Though not a new concept for those in 2015, there were some remarkable achievements in the field. Google announced works with Cardboard program.
Google Cardboard projects had received low interest in 2014 but rose to popularity in a year gone by.
Companies like OnePlus developed a Cardboard viewer. The Cardboard can be used for achieving immersive education and 2015 saw Google Cardboard now being shipped in over 100 countries in around 39 languages.
So I would say that's the success as well. If you're like me, you can hit up Eric Gardini up on PODNETS. He will direct you to some 3D videos. He sent me one here not too long ago. The Bohemian Rhapsody one, Stellar.
Those are just some of the things in Google that have been successes. You have apps like Allo Duo that people don't like. Well, you know that's fine but that doesn't mean that they're failures. You just mean we don't use them.
And the app market is a tough market. There's so many messages out there getting people to use them is one thing.
I use Google Keep. I love Google Keeps another program. It's a free program. Kind of like a notes program. One of my favorite things. If you don't use it, you can categorize stuff. I use it all time. I'm using it now. A lot of the stuff that I read off about Google is pretty much done on Google Keep.
It'll copy and do links. It's just another thing that I love. But there's other things as well. But next time you go to bash Google, just remember this. They've been very successful.
And if you were just as successful as that, you would have Google money. But you know what? You don't.
So next time you say that Google's failing or they're going down the ship or they're the Titanic, they're never going to be the Titanic. They're just way too big and they have just way too many ideas.
And this Google home is going to be big. I think Google's a success. I use a lot of Google products and I'm happy to use them. So in the future, let me know what you think.
Either you agree with me or disagree with me, send me an email. You can send it to Tech Warriors, T-E-C-H-W-A-R-R-I-O-R-Z at gmail.com. Tech Warriors with a Z at the end. Let me know what you think. I'll answer your questions online on the next couple podcasts.
And we'll see how it goes from there. But it's an opinion like anything else and I look forward to everybody else's. And thank you.
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