Google

Is Google the Internet? Pretty much. It’s been years since Google morphed into an Internet icon, transforming what was a search engine—the term sounds almost archaic now—into the world’s information storehouse, answer-finder, and oracle-like source of knowledge. Consider a New Yorker cartoon, from way back in the early years of the 21st century. Two middle-aged men stand next to each other at a bar. One looks at the other with a bewildered expression and says, “I can’t explain it—it’s just a funny feeling that I’m being Googled.” Yes, you’re being Googled—you and everyone else in the world. But you probably don’t mind, as that’s just the way it is now. You use Google for everything. For researching travel destinations, for checking the weather, for determining the whereabouts of former girlfriends and boyfriends. But it’s more than that, too—far more than that. With Google, you can type in the address of destination for a dinner party, say, and see an image of your host’s front door, then carom down the street as if you’re in a car with a camera. Weird. Or you can type in the name of mountain in Montana and scope it from the sky, as if you’re descending from a spaceship. Very weird. And, let’s face it, very Google. What will they think up next? Who knows. But maybe it doesn’t matter, because think they will, and for now you can spend hours and days exploring Google’s maps and videos and books, and you will only have explored a microscopic portion of the Google universe. Because, let’s face it, the Google universe is the universe.