Ten years ago, Google was one of many search engines – and it was still one most people hadn’t really heard of.
That then changed very rapidly and it became the world’s search engine of choice.
But we were soon to learn that it had far wider ambitions. The crystal gazers of Silicon Valley had, it seems, looked far into the future and seen a world few of us could possibly have begun to imagine.
With the advent of such products as Google maps and the fact that Google has become akin to a “utility” service for so much of the world’s population that we’d be hard-pressed to live a day without it – and go into a panicking hissy-fit if the web is down for any reason, we all gradually began to “get it”; some of us a lot later than others.
In fact, Google is today the world’s most valuable single brand according to industry analysts. It’s a brand that is strong enough to go where the company wants it to. And it may even go in the direction of the car, so new car offers could be very different in the not-so-distant future.
The fact is that the car world is changing fast with the new technology of the nineties and noughties like hybrids becoming mainstream. But as hybrid and electric cars become ever more popular and driverless vehicle technology progresses apace – the world’s major car makers may be too slow to keep up with the likes of Google which has already produced a prototype driverless car.
What seems most likely in reality is a gradual converging of technologies via corporate agreements between car manufacturing technological pioneers like Honda and the likes of Google.
All of a sudden, it doesn’t seem too strange a concept to envisage a car produced, at least in part or in partnership by Google. Nor does it seem such a quantum leap of the imagination for that car to be autonomous and driverless – with the occupants busy Googling within!