records

It’s 6:30 am. Your alarm goes off. On your Android phone. You turn it off, roll over and check your GMail before dragging yourself out of bed.

You get ready to leave but learn that your normal bus line is off schedule. You use Google Transit to navigate a different way to work.

Finally, at the office you turn on your Chrome OS-powered notebook, which provides access to company information using Google Apps. Can’t find something? No problem. The Google Search Appliance is fueling enterprise-wide search for your entire company.

Getting on with your day, you open up Google Calendar to check your schedule and then it’s back to GMail for a look at Tasks you need to tackle.

You open up a Google docs (that is shared with several coworkers) and contribute. Then you check the Google Sites intranet to get updates on your department and the company.

It’s lunchtime. Your buddy wants to meet up for lunch so he texts your Google Voice phone number and you arrange to meet at that new Italian restaurant for lunch.

You’re not quite sure where it is so you look it up on Google Maps.

In the afternoon, you work on some Google Spreadsheets and upload pictures of the company picnic to Picasa.

A message pops up on Google Talk. It’s your wife. She uploaded that cute video of your daughter (recorded on her Google Android phone) to YouTube and then posted it on your family’s Blogger blog.

An email arrives from your family care practitioner. Those labs from your doctor’s visit the other day are in. You check them in your Google Health records.

After work, you go home. Your son needs help with his homework. You get out the Android-powered netbook and use Google search to look up the information you need to help him out. You explore Google Earth to assist with his geography and help him with SketchUp to complete a social studies project due the next day.

Before settling down for the night, you check Google News, your feeds in Google Reader and Google Finance to stay informed with what’s going on in the world and your portfolio. You watch a couple of shows on YouTube and then finally hit the hay.

This all might sound extreme, but it’s completely possible – right now. These are all items and offerings that currently exist in the Google product line.

Would it really be farfetched to add a few things like a Google TV, a Google gaming console, or a Google personal media player? No, not really. After all, think about the competition.

Apple has the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. Microsoft has the XBox 360. Yahoo! created a Widget Channel to enhance Internet on TV.

Actually, come to think of it, Google has already begun their journey onto TV. Gaming devices, the Apple TV and Vudu offer the ability to access YouTube on your television.

Then there’s Google’s connection with the government: their close relationship with NASA, Eric Schmidt’s appointment to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and the White House’s YouTube channel. There’s the support for a national broadband plan and their involvement in spectrum auctions.

For the most part, it makes sense for Google to grow as they do. They’re a public company headquartered in a democratic, capitalistic society. It’s their duty to their shareholders to generate profit and to preserve their role in the marketplace as best as possible.

But Google now has a lot of power. It’s probably more power than any of the first hundred or thousand employees ever anticipated when Google was just a startup. Let’s hope that power never becomes absolute.