Twenty years ago, you didn’t just “Google” something, though these days you do. What have we all been Googling in big numbers in the time Google came to our spot of the world?
Things have changed a lot in the past twenty years. Laptops are thinner, phones can do more, we download more music than what we used to buy in physical media, and social media has become the way many of us talk over using the phone for what it was originally intended.
We also didn’t use the term “Google” as an interchangeable term for search, but these days, that’s definitely what we do.
Google has become part of what we do, and whether you use an Android phone or not, there’s a good chance you refer to an internet search as a Google, with this becoming the default way people look online, even as new players turn up.
While Google and Australia haven’t always been on the best of terms — remember when Google threatened to leave Australia? — most of Google’s life down under seems to have been pretty solid, and this week, the search giant is talking about it, celebrating 20 years locally.
That includes some of the initiatives, such as Google Maps which started in Australia, while Google Street View has visited some local places to document life on board a ferry and across Christmas Island during the red crab migration, as well as to the middle of the country.
There have been doodles for Fairy Bread, the Opera House, and plenty of others, and throughout its time in Australia, there have been a tremendous amount of searches, with Aussies reportedly keen for a lot of DIY, information about bushfires and air quality, and plenty of searches about travel, including time travel, believe it or not.
What will Aussies be searching 20 years from now? Only time will tell (unless time travel is real, in which case feel free to pop back in time and let us know).
