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As a very successful company it is of only passing interest, there are many such companies; as a technology it is not particularly at the cutting edge and again there are many more in a similar position. However, what makes us all sit up and take notice of Google is, well, Google itself. Its whole approach, for instance the ever-changing and witty images it uses as it logo. What other company would have the confidence to change its logo on an almost daily basis? Who else would have a mission to "organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and to take that ambition seriously?
Of course of most interest, particularly to us librarians, is the strange love-hate relationship we have with this mother of all search engines. Do we cringe when we read from the Google website statements like "an 'I'm feeling lucky' search means less time searching for web pages and more time looking at them"? A quick survey of colleagues has indicated that according to their usage patterns Google is very much in the ascendancy....