What's not to love!

Monopolies are a bad thing, we all know that. It is a universal truth that greater consumer choice creates competitive pricing, innovative products and a fairer world for all. Giant corporations that merge, acquire, undercut and annihilate their way to total domination are looked upon with fear and distaste. I remember, as a student, reading ‘No Logo’  by Naomi Klein and being enraged by the plight of the independent coffee shops, delicatessen’s and family run enterprises that had been crushed by the giant corporations.

As a result I, like most people, have an instinctive predilection to root for the plucky underdog as a response to the dominance of a competitor. It is this basic human instinct that companies like Virgin, Apple and Airbus have used to their advantage to become the global corporate giants they are today. In all areas of my life I will always give the little guy my business, even if it takes more of my time and comes at a premium. All areas, that is, except for the search engine I use. When I’m looking for anything online I’ll always choose Google.

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The search engines are always trying to find ways to tempt the user into using their specific site. After all, they are in it to make money, lots of money, buckets of the stuff in fact. Mark my words and mark them well. In the future we will all live and work at the whim of GoogleCorp… until that day, there is some competition in the shape of Microsoft’s oddly named Bing!

Now last year amid much fanfare and cries of invaded privacy (who can forget the poor guy caught leaving a house of ill repute) Google launched ‘Google street view’ a thoroughly marvellous piece of photo tomfoolery that allowed you to walk a virtual mile through any major city in the U.S. and then the UK and Europe.

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