I've always liked Google (or, for those of you supporting McCain, "the google" - keep using those Video Professor CDs, you'll get there eventually) for a number of reasons. Mostly that the products they produce are so darn useful. I blog here, I've used Gmail since I first managed to wrangle an invite (remember the beta? When users had like 6 invites?), Google Reader is my preferred RSS reader both at home and on my mobile, Google Maps takes Yahoo! to school and while I've never really needed Google Earth, it's awfully fun to play with...They're also a very cool company. They encourage employees to use 20% of their work time to pursue their own projects, some of which have turned out to be more cool Google products. And don't get me started on the Googleplex. I want to work at the Googleplex, and I don't do anything even remotely useful to them. Those kids play areas filled with multicolored balls? I didn't encounter on until I was just over the height restriction for it, and I was quite resentful. Google? Has one for the Googlers. They're just fun. They feed the Googlers quite well and have snack and drink stations every five feet (hyperbole alert)!
So now I have one more reason to like them. They have taken an official stance in opposition to California's reprehensible Proposition 8 (constitutional amendment banning gay marriage), claiming that,
See the Official Google Blog for the full statement."it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love."
Way to go Google. Thanks for being a standup sort of company. And Happy Tenth Birthday!
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