Antony’s Personal Opinion

This morning, another Google recruiter from Mountain View (their headquarter) contacted me via email. He asked me whether I am interested working for Google. I explained to him that I would need H1B visa to work in the United States. He replied back, even though the limit of H1B visa has been reached, they can still start interviewing process for 2007 recruitment. OK… I made an appointment for the first interview tomorrow afternoon.

You may know that Google’s interview process is one of the toughest ones in the world. If you don’t know, try to search for “Google interview” and you will know what I am talking about. Honestly, I am pessimistic to pass the interview process. Google have been hiring the best engineers and scientists on this planet. Furthermore, most of their engineers are young fresh brilliant guys who are still under 30!

Well… let’s see tomorrow….

After contacted by Google, I was asking to myself: which Google products that I am actually using? Here is the list of them:

• Google Search. I believe everybody is using this service. According to SearchEngineWatch.com, Google has 43.7% market share in the US, followed by Yahoo! and MSN.
  What I mean by Google Search here includes Web Search, Image Search and Code Search. About half a year ago, I posted a blog about Some Interesting Things You Can with Google.
   
• GMail. If you know me in person, you may notice that GMail has been my primary email address for quite some time.
   
• Google News. This is the “newspaper” that I always read every morning. The nice thing about Google News is that I can personalize which news I want to read.
   
• Google AdSense. I use AdSense to monetize my web site and my blogs. Although it generates money for me, I still cannot make a living from it yet. Fortunately, after doing some optimization, my income from AdSense has increased significantly.
   
• Google Analytics. I use this tool to analyze the traffic to my web sites and my blogs.
   
• Google Toolbar. Nothing special, It is just a plug-in to my web browsers, Internet Explorer and FireFox.
   
• Google Earth. It is definitely the coolest online map that I have ever seen. Interestingly, my small home town in Indonesia can now be viewed via Google Earth. Thanks to Google team!
   
• Google Maps for Mobile. I have been using the mobile version of Google Maps in my smart phones. It has been featured in my blog, S60Tips.com, as featured freeware and 10 must-have freeware applications for S60 phones.
   
• Google Personalized Home Page. The first home page that I always visit everyday each time I turn on my computer.
   
• Google Picasa. This is my primary photo organizer application.
   
• Google Web Accelerator. Just downloaded this tool a couple of days ago, still don’t know whether it really improves my browsing experience or not.
   
• Google YouTube. Although YouTube has just been acquired by Google last week, I want to mention it here too. I am not an active YouTube blogger, but I have posted some personal videos there.
   
• Google Translate. This is a very useful tool to translate text from one language to another. I had experience chatting in Chinese with a friend although I don’t speak Chinese at all (I just use Google to translate everything for me… :)).
   
• Google Pack. A small application from Google that allows me to download important Windows applications, such as Adobe Acrobat, FireFox, Picasa, etc.

There are some other Google products that I use rarely because I prefer similar products from their competitors. Here is the list of them:

• Google Talk. An instant messaging that I rarely use. The reason is simply because most of my friends are using either Microsoft’s Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger.
   
• Google Blogger. Blogger used to be my weblogs before I decided to move to WordPress. My last post is still available at Blogger even until today.
   
• Google Reader. I tried this service once, but I don’t like it. I am currently using BlogLines to read my feed subscription.
   
• Google Finance. Perhaps it is just a matter of taste, but I like Yahoo! Finance more than Google Finance.
   
• Google Blog Search. Although Google is the king of search, for some reasons, I prefer to use Technorati for blog searching.
   
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets. I don’t know why I am still addicted to Microsoft Office. I know it is not good; perhaps I have to start using non-Microsoft Office applications from now on. Last time, I was very lucky to get huge discount of Microsoft Office from my company.
   
• Google Calendar. Same as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, I am still addicted to Microsoft Outlook….
   
• Google Desktop. It is supposed to be a cool desktop search application. Unfortunately, when I installed it last time, my computer is getting slower. That’s why I decided to uninstall it completely.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Career, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.