The company went on the stock market in 2004 making an awful lot of people rich because of the hard work of its employees. Those same employees have both taken on and developed applications to make our lives easier, more educational, better communicated, and more productive.

They've been on Fortune Magazine's 100 top places to work for multiple times. Google has been an example in the public eye now for some time. It brings benefits to the masses while making money from businesses who use its services and data, as well as its position as king of the internet and perhaps the most powerful brand in the world.

Google helps us in so many ways:

Photography, maps, news, video, shopping, finance, blogs, web sites, literature, merchant transactions, free directory service, medical records, translation, health records, patent/product/web/video/image/book-searches, online sharing/collaboration of documents/presentations/spreadsheets, to name but a few. They've developed an operating system for mobile phones, a new web browser that has caught fire with users faster than FireFox. Soon Google will be able to take your phone messages, convert the sound to text, and send it by email or to your mobile phone...enabling you to manage multiple lines through one central location. And one the the best apps. given our current economic condition, is one which will enable you to monitor your home's electrical usage and find ways to cut down your bills.

The demonstration of the voice to text conversion was fun!! And in fact, the app. did pretty well even though the caller made it sound confusing in order to try and trip up the application. If reading the message didn't make sense, you could go back and listen to the actual message. But in this case, the voice msg. left was an intentional confusion, however the app. did pretty well to get it right! The commentators confused themselves listening to the voice. To watch more videos demonstrating many things from conference calling (a great improvement over how we currently have to initiate it on regular phones), to call screening, to personalized greetings, go to https://www.google.com/voice/about

Most of Google's apps are free to the public with only the business versions being pay for use. Most people love working for Google because they make the work environment conducive to creativity and productivity. Our love for the Google doesn't stop there. They more than anyone is aware of how much power it takes to produce and maintain all the available data that we use. For several years now they have been designing environmentally friendly offices, curbing power usage, even going so far as to blanket their roofs with solar panels and solar charging stations in their parking lots that also provide shade for some employee cars. In California, they even run their own employee transit system of very comfortable and work-friendly buses with internet access.

Like most companies, the stock (GOOG) has lost much value. One year ago, it nearly reached $600 while today it is trading around $320-$340.

No company in tech during my time in the market has risen to this scale in the way that they have. They've done it by mostly always doing the right thing. The right thing for the employees, the right thing for the stock holders, and the right thing for the world.