What would you do without Google?

The only thing it would affect for me would be my school e-mail because our e-mail goes through Google Apps. Other than that, I wouldn’t even notice a difference.

What did we ( those of us over 25 ) ever do Google BC?

I guess we’d ask friends or go to the library. lol

Not that big of a deal really.

Before both Google and the internet, I functioned very well with research material at a quaint venue called a library.

@gailcalled

How archaic Gail, damn, guess we should be bronzed ey?

Call a relative or friend with the knowledge I am looking for, call the doctor, go to the library.

I would need a dozen assistants to accomplish what I did today using Google, if we had to use paper records and the phone.

I do a lot of research on people and companies. I’m old enough to use the library, too, I actually did similar work without the Internet.

Go back to using a card catalog, the way I did for the first 40+ years of my life (I still keep my thesis notes on 3×5 cards).

Other than Google Earth to spy on people I don’t Google. I use Ixquick as my search engine and from there life is good.

Dogpile

i would use Bing. haha just kidding. that would suck

I guess I would simply do my best to soldier on. Try to remember how we managed in my youth, in those pioneer days, those rough and tumble pre-google days. Oh! And I would also use other search engines.

@jonsblond call the doctor – that’s a good one.

I have always been very good at using the Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Dictionary, Yellow pages and the library card catalog. Even now, I have several shelves of reference books in my house. When I was younger, I nearly lived at the library.

I google everything. It’s super easy considering my web browser has a google search bar. If I did not have google I would be lost and confused. I also would not know about Fluther.

Keep right on living.

I use google very little. I have a gmail account but its not my primary one. I use mainly Bing for search, and I don’t use any other google apps. Truth is, I don’t trust what they’re doing with all this data they’re collecting.

Bing, Yahoo, MSN et cetera.

I’d get on with my life, as I always have before it existed. Imagine that.

@downtide
Every site is gathering data. Just imagine what this site is gathering. Once your online everything is public.

I would probably feel paralysed for a little while. I use Gmail for both my personal and school emails; I use Google Calendar on my computer and my phone, to organise my schedule; and the college newspaper I work for basically functions off Google Documents. No Google also means no Youtube and all the entertainment and educational value that comes with it. Needless to say, I also use Google on a daily basis, whether it’s for school research or just to look up little nuggets of information.

Now that Google is available for everything, speaking of nuggets of information, why so much difficulty with the your, you’re, whose, who’s, they’re, their, there, its, it’s issue?

@gailcalled
Maybe I can just send them to you for edit. I used to obsess over every typo and I have to laugh that I really just don’t care lately. It’s a good thing.

@SeventhSense: That was not directed at you. And they’re not typos but words with different meanings. You’re right; it’s all good.

@gailcalled
Sure

@SeventhSense Yes, I know, but with google they’re collecting so much data. Magnitudes more than anyone else.

What would you do without cars? Ride a horse.

We are the descendants of successful people who did neither have Google nor cars.

My fraternal grandfather arrived here from Lithuania in 1888, aged 17. He spoke 6 languages but none of them English. When handed a banana at immigrations, he ate it from the north pole to the south.

He retired very rich and filled with the same joie de vivre. This helped

Our Ben’s great-grandfather. In 1894 he was 23.

His wife raised and fed 5 strapping sons with a vegetable garden. a grape arbor, mulberry trees, and a butcher and fishmonger within walking distance. She used an oak icebox; the iceman came every few days and brought a large block of ice is with tongs. He gave me a sliver to eat. Better than a Dove bar to a 4-year-old

@gailcalled
That’s quite impressive an invention. It’s amazing how an item like that changes everything.

@SeventhSense: The funny part is that Grandpa Ben claimed sole credit for the invention. It wasn’t until a niece of mine recently found the original patent that we realized there were two other men involved. It may be that my gramps had the idea and the other two did the drawings and engineering specs.

Well maybe he was a better salesman. It’s like Guglielmo Marconi. He is often credited with the invention of radio but it was really Nikola Tesla.

Interesting article

Ben did have the original idea, and he was also a superb salesman. While a teen-ager in the little shtetl in Lithuania, he apprenticed himself to the local locksmith. It turned out he had a gift for the tool and die business and a mechanical bent.

He also had the saykhel and the chutzpah to borrow some money and open the Mendelson & Finkel Umbrella Frame Factory in the Bronx, near the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. At some point he bought Mendelson out and became Finkel, the umbrella king.

@gailcalled
And still, when it rains, you can find them selling them on the subway cheap. Although those damn umbrellas suck.

@SeventhSense: Of course, those pieces of crap are not Finkel umbrellas. Unfortunately, the only ones left are stored in family basements. I still have three with the original brown paper wrapping and tags.

I’d love to sell them on eBay.

@SeventhSense: The company officially closed in 1980; so I should add that these brollies are slightly faded and very dusty. Only sentimental value, I would guess. Although some people will buy anything, I am told.

I would imagine they have more than sentimental value. They are history.