Some folks are really alarmist....

What if there were no Google? A lesson in monoculture


This article discusses the drawbacks of having one company, one suite of software, as the sole way that people accomplish their tasks on a computer. The author lists all the key tasks that Google lets its users do: namely, search; email; document storage; chat; maps and directions; etc. The drawbacks to using only one thing are then described in the most negative fashion possible: what do you do if the software disappears or loses support? What about security issues?

Google is a terrible example. And so is Microsoft. (used in this article, of course). Then again, I say this, and I am the person who said 10 years ago that Windows being everywhere would be the best thing for computing. Everyone can be taught the same thing, everything can be compatible with everything else, there is a strong company behind the product, one that may end up failing in the far future but that will have a contingency plan for its users if and when this begins to happen. And really, if the company were to fail...wouldn't this be because its user base has trickled away in the first place. (Hello...we live in a free market economy still!).

Macs have security issues too, by the way. Virus creators don't take a lot of time on them, however, because there are less Mac OS's out there. And yeah, there are more and more of them because of the stupid cute computers and the incorrect impression that Macs do media better. But with more in use you will find that there are more and more incursions upon the security of those Mac OS computers. (And this is proving to be true).

Back to the Google monoculture. OK, so I use Google for everything. And? After noting to a friend that the White House's town hall almost entirely used Google software, and the word "google" is now in most novels that take place in contemporary times, I said "and if they were to somehow fail as a company, the government would simply need to create a "Department of Search and Cloud Computing Platforms." Or else something will have already taken its place and I (and others) moved myself there, or had the opportunity to make the move if we hadn't already.