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12 things Google does better than any other tech company
Google started out as a research project in 1996, and founder Sergei Brin and Larry Page nearly sold it for $1 million because it was interfering with their academics.
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Now, Google is everywhere. Unless you're actively trying to avoid Google's products or services, it's likely that you're using at least one of them.
The competition is tougher than ever, but some of Google's services are consistently better than anything else out there.
Check them out:
Google Now shows you a wide variety of useful information without making you even search for it.
It automatically shows you "cards" with information about things like traffic or public transit delays along your commute, weather, calendar reminders, sports scores, package tracking, news you're interested in, and locations you might be interested in your area.
It's more robust than any other digital assistant like Siri or Microsoft's Cortana.
Apple Maps has made strides, but it still hasn't caught up with Google Maps.
Unlike smartphones from Samsung, LG, HTC, and most other companies, Nexus phones run pure Android.
They also come without the annoying apps, or "bloatware," from your carrier, as they're sold unlocked directly from Google, often for cheaper than other premium Android phones.
In several ways, Android is better than Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones and iPads. For example, notifications and settings are much easier to manage on Android than they are on iOS.
Android is also a lot more customizable than iOS, and it allows you to do little things that make a big difference, like ditching animations to make your Android phone feel faster.
Google's free-to-use productivity suite includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, and they offer almost all the functionality of Microsoft's Office Suite.
You don't need to install anything as you can run these apps straight from your web browser, and you don't even need to be connected to the internet to use them.
There's also a great search feature in Google Photos that lets you search for something specific in your pictures.
For example, if you want to find pictures of your cat, you can search for "cat" and Google Photos will show you all the photos with cats. The same goes for other search terms like locations, people, events, and even objects.
Nothing comes close to YouTube for watching and uploading videos on the Internet.
Google's Project Fi charges you a base rate of $20 for unlimited talk and text, and an additional $10 per gigabyte of data in a monthly billing cycle.
However, if you only use 600 megabytes of your gigabyte in a month, Google will refund you $4 for the 400 remaining megabytes you didn't use in that monthly billing cycle.
In short, you only pay for the data you use.
Other search engines work fine for some, but Google still dominates at delivering what you want, when you want it.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
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