I still remember in my younger days, when we had to decide about any important decisions in life, my mother used to write down the decisions in paper, put it in front of god, and after a pooja, we used to get it picked by a child and follow that result with no second opinion. We believed that if this is coming from god, then it should be right.
Today when we face the same situation, we now have a new god to answer our querries. It may be about buying a car or starting a new business, we now decide by placing our querry in front of a new god. This god we use is google. very simple, today, we just go to google, type in our new venture and see the results, say I want to buy a car swift, type car name swift followed by review, read it and then decide that yes this is really worth to buy. We have so much faith in this system that we never again go for a second opinion. If google provides a answer to our querry, then we firmly believe that it should be really really right. Now can we not call google to be a God.
The greatest asset that google company has won from its customer today i think is faith. People believe in google. They think that google is truth. Even while choosing email accounts the first and most safest mailing system people feel is google mail or gmail. We always see that anything that is ranked number one by google in their search querry, then they should be the number one. Till today, this faith has never failed except in a few very very rare cases.
Take for example. Once when I had been to Mahindra World city in chennai, we found a few apartments there very beautiful and to have a reference I took the photograph of an apartment from outside. The man immediately rushed out and shouted at me saying that I have no right to take his house picture. Later on he did not leave me till i deleted it. But I came back home, launched Google earth and when I browsed to the same mahindra world city, I could see that apartment very clearly with complete view of its ambience. Then I felt very strange. A known man in front of your eyes takes a picture of your house and we grumble. But we have an unknown system sitting somewhere in space, it takes the images of our houses and provides it to everyone and in this case we will feel very proud to see that our location is on google earth. This is what i call faith. We believe Google is something which is the safest. No one can deny this fact that today, people may doubt about God, or his religious faith, but he will never doubt google.
But for how many days, google can handle this immense faith people have in it. I sometimes fear what happens if larry page, turns out to be someone like Ramalinga Raju. Everyone telugu speaking man in this world felt that if one man can make them proud in this world, that would be ramalinga raju. They showed immense faith in him. Even he was very good. But somewhere at sometime down the line, Greed and bad thoughts made its way into Raju and today he has made every teluguite feel ashamed. Now how can we say that the same thoughts may not hit google rulers. What happens if Google owners or its promoters do some grave mistake and lead to the death or closure of this gigantic company ?
We are so much dependent on this one system called google that we never know the catastophe we may have to face, if something happens to it. Recently Google mail stopped working for just 15 minutes and created a huge panic all over the globe. In my business, If I dont have food, i can live a day, If I dont have water I can live without bath, We even lived without toilets for two days when our house was under renovation. But if we dont have internet one day, then we are finished. and the only thing that affects without internet is that we cant use google. Whenever my son asks me any difficult question, I say him very confidently that I will get him answer in ten minutes. I just sit on my system, google the question and get him the answer. I have so much faith that not even in the remote corner of my mind, i will have a doubt that whether i will get the anser. So much is our faith in google.
Now comes the greatest fear of my life. What happens if google collapses. Just like Lehman Brothers, Bank of America or like Madoff, if google gets shut down, then our lives will not be the same anymore. We have to very seriously think about it. Sometimes we feel Google has become so much integral part of society that it is no more a business establhishment but a Consotorium meant to serve people. like we world wide web consotorium Google should be converted from a corporate business house to a consotorium. It can no more be controlled by a bunch of share holders but it has to be controlled by a Government or a Non profit organizaion with social relevance.
Take the example of God. The famous Tirumala temple in Andhra Pradesh was actuallly belonging to a particular Iyengar community who were running it as their own property. But as Lord Venkateshware became famous, his popularity grew leap and bounds and when millions started to visit this temple then everyone felt its not safe to live this temple in the hands of a small family or community. What happens if there is a fight inside this family, they file a case, and temporarily close down venkateshwara temple for a few days, It creates panic in human faith. Knowing this very well, The government took over this temple and has appointed a non profit organization called TTD to run this temple
Now I feel even in case of Google this must happen. The problem with google is it has no nationality, It has no religion, It has no social boundaries. Hence it is very very difficult to govern it. The only solution is to turn it into a consotorium like World wide web or IEEE. This has to be done fast. Or otherwise one day we might face the worst ever attack on our faith.
