The World of Google apps and Web 2.0

As most of you may already know, Google is one of the most widely used search engines in the world. It is as ubiquitous as are Coca Cola, Nike and McDonalds. As always, the restless minds at Google Labs are very much in tune with this Web 2.0 world we are living in, meaning, a world wide web of intuitive and useful web applications all revolving around social networking and the need for fast and easy access to personal and/or business information.

With these factors in mind, Google created Google Mail or Gmail, a very easy-to-use webmail application as powerful as any email client you may have installed locally on your computer. Having a Gmail account will give you access to the a myriad of complimentary applications such as Google Docs, which includes Google Spreadsheets, PowerPoint and Word, eliminating the need to have applications installed such as MS Office. Another great application aimed at social networking is the Google Photos or Picasa Photos, a downloadable version is available as well for managing your photos locally. For those wanting to share videos, there is also the famous and sometimes infamous YouTube.

For the those in the IT industry, in particular the web design & SEO [Search Engine Optimization] industry, there is also Google Analytics which is a very powerful and extensive Ajax-based web stats application [running off the Urchin stats engine] where you can monitor all your traffic sources, number of visits, demographics, cross reference OS usage, browsers, etc. Along with Analytics, there is Google site maps where you can upload your website’s xml sitemap allowing Google’s spider to crawl your site more efficiently, therefore improving your site rank and visibility. Finally, there is Google Adwords, a PPC [Pay-Per-Click] application that allows you to create your online ads where you bid on keywords that are relevant to your business and displays your ad in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section beside or above related keyword search results.

Here we have covered only a small percentage of the applications available from Google and are all available simply by having a Gmail account.

Not bad for FREE services.

Check out:
www.gmail.com
www.google.com/services

*Google goes Mobile - be on the lookout for the Google Phone [currently available in the US from T-mobile]. More on that later!