Google Hacks

When Google first appeared in the Internet search arena, there were quite a few established and reliable search engines around. Without warning, the company's name turned into a verb. People began to say, "just Google it." Google is currently the top search engine, followed by Yahoo and Microsoft, who have both been offering search services longer.

Google's first success was followed by their web based email service, Gmail. The new Gmail offered its subscribers an always-available solution for email, unlike a locally based Internet service provider, much like web hosting providers offer their customers. Initially, the service grew because it was restricted to early adopters and the people to whom they sent invitations to join. Since Google had competition, the strategy they used to separate themselves from other online email services was a much larger free storage space allocation. They promoted the advantages of Gmail's email archiving options compared to deleting emails to conserve space on other web mail services.

Soon Google became an empire of web services, including online documents, images, videos, scanned books, news, maps and Google Earth, among others. The company offers new services and improves the original ones frequently. Google devotees and users rely on a community of users to distribute tips and tricks for getting even more mileage out of every service that Google introduces. Early adopters also stay tuned to the latest beta services by logging into Google Labs to try out new offerings and create new hacks for them. Google does not seem to mind, although the company's updates often cause some of the users' tricks to stop working temporarily. In fact, some of the most popular hacks, tricks and tips come from Google's team of developers.

Some popular Google hacks as of late include:

Some people even write java scripts that improve Google's performance and features. A few have created widgets that automate menu commands and searches. More than one person has written a book on the subject of great Google hacks, too. At any given time, all you have to do is "Google it" to find popular, useful hacks for most Google applications and services.