Google, more than a search engine

When I think of the word "Google" now to be referred to as "G" I must admit I always thought of them as just a search engine the "go to" place when you wanted to find something, but over the last couple of weeks that has changed.

Now I have always had a Gmail email address because in my opion having one not tied to an ISP "just makes sense"  as I wrote about earlier, but I had never explored the other services G gives us for free. In the last couple of weeks as I explored cloud opportunities for work that all changed. I was amazed at how well G has integrated the whole experience from Gmail to  their new social network venture Google + to steal from Apple "they just work".

In the last week I have tested a number of their services with the help of family, friends and co-workers, these services included text chatting in Gmail, Video chat in Gmail, sharing images via Picasa Web Albums, text chat in Google +, Hangout in Google + (a very cool group video chat feature), document sharing using Google Docs and they just all worked seamlessly and with ease.

All of these things are available to individuals and businesses for free and if you want even more for your business then there are paid services to further enhance the experience, even the cost of these is very competitive. If you have never tried them out I encourage you to give them a try they are easy to use, integrate well with Mac or PC and cost you nothing. The one thing that stands out to me from the G products is they make it easy for you to control what others see about you on the web, something I think Facebook and others have hidden and made tough to control which has caused them problems in the media and with users. Time will tell how people embrace this integration of products, but for me they are making my life a whole lot easier and they cost me nothing, not even my privacy on the web!

If you want to try these out you can start by visiting www.gmail.com and then go from there as they have everything available to you from there. Google + is new within the last couple of weeks and is being rolled out slowly so you may not see that as an option in your Gmail as yet.

I find using the "Reader" in Gmail a great way to keep up on the blogs and web sites I want to keep track of personally and need to professionally, it is easy to use and allows me to see what I want or may need to read at a glance. Let me know what you use, how you like it and what advantages you see to having everything in one place.