Google has taken the world, especially the world of the World Wide Web by storm, there is no doubt of that and it just took them a decade or thereabouts to do it. Before the turn of the millennium, Google was a new nerdy toy – normal surfers used Yahoo or, in America, AOL. There were other choices but serious surfers knew that the rest were toys really.
Then came Google and it wiped the floor with AOL and, more recently, Yahoo as well. Google is the acknowledged master of Net search engines in the second decade of this millennium. You may think that is a good enough reason to explain why Google is so important. And why not?
However, there are other reasons why Google is so important. None of the other search engines empowered surfers to make any money except themselves. All the other search engines used all the information from surfers’ searches to empower and enrich themselves, whereas Google decided to give some back.
This idea, which was revolutionary at the time it was brought in, enabled anyone who could cobble together a website, the capability of earning a couple of dollars or even a fortune. Worldwide! Anyone! Not merely Net and computer-savvy students but anybody.
‘All’ they had to do was make a web site, put some interesting content on it and a couple of snippets of code supplied by Google and hey presto! Anyone clicking on that ad earned the web master money.
We do not actually know what percentage of earnings from clicks web masters get, but Google intimates that it is about fifty percent. You may think that this is fair or you may not, the fact is that some people in the world only earn a dollar or two for a hard day’s work, whereas anyone can earn a passive income from Google’s Adsense.
‘Passive income’ in the sense that you compose an interesting series of pieces, make them into a web site, add Google’s code, promote the web site and you will earn an income for possibly years to come. That means that in theory, an African village farmer’s child could earn far more than its parents.
The first time ever that this has happened and Google made it possible!
OK, Google is not a philanthropic organization or at least it did not start out that way, but it’s owners did have the foresight to realize that by sharing their earnings (or paying people to promote them, whichever way you choose to look at it) would encourage web masters to promote Google.
AOL and Yahoo must be kicking themselves for having been so greedy.
Anyway, that is why Google is so important. It is important because it created a new Net business model that you can now see other companies trying to copy. There are all sorts of firms, particularly networking sites offering a couple of cents earnings for putting in work and there are also advertisers paying publishers of web sites who put their ads up too, but Google did it first and they are still the market leaders.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is now involved with the SEO Content. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at PLR Articles
