A Visit to Google: What I saw and Learnt when I visited Google, Silicon Valley, CA, US

Google is one of the World’s top-most technology companies with information on almost everyone, and everything. Google’s mission is to gather the world’s information, organize it, and avail it to people for purposeful use. As such, it is one of the most powerful companies in the world.

I think Google is the only company that has truly and directly contributed to my socioeconomic transformation, for I have had to use Google tools for business for years, and for ‘free’! I have used Google Forms for research and surveys. I have used Gmail for decades, receiving and sending messages that have changed my life.

I have used Google Chrome, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Notes, and other tools for projects that directly paid cash into my account. Wait! Did you know that Miklah Life, this website that you are on, actually started on Google’s Blogger before we could embrace and shift to WordPress?

Google has supported me, just as much as I have supported them with my data, lol.

That said, I am among the lucky ones on this planet, for I physically visited the Google campus or Googleplex during my attendance at the African Diaspora Investment Symposium 2024 (ADIS24) in Silicon Valley, California. In this brief article, I share the thoughts and inspirations I have drawn from this visit.

Google Experience: I and Miklah Life at Googleplex

As already stressed, yesterday, I explored the heart of Silicon Valley, and saw the center of miracles, of tools that make our everyday lives a miracle! Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Netflix, Cisco, Google, Tesla, name it, they are all here.

Enough time was taken at Google, for the ‘Giant of the World’ has intentionally set up a better visitors’ experience park or package, whatever! So we touched and smelt everything ‘Google’, including riding their bicycles, their latest Pixels, bags, everything!

This was so touching and inspiring for me and for #MiklahLife, the small company I lead.

What touched me at Google was the simplicity, spaciousness, happy and welcoming faces, accessibility, even for those with disabilities, and the endless flow of possibilities. It was humbling to finally see the source of the machine that runs the world.

Looking at, touching, feeling, and smelling things that make Google what it is, felt like normal. No fake excitements or unnecessary shiny spaces or tools, noise, and self-appraisals. Things and people were simple.

Speaking with workers at the company, perusing through the displayed products and services, including phones, laptops, T-shirts, foods, fruits, water, hats, and each of the above things looking entirely normal, usual, but unique, got me re-imagine and redefine beauty, sophistication, power, knowledge, greatness.

How can everyday things, everyday people, and the environment create such a global change as Google has done?

Why Google is Great!

California, the US state that houses Silicon Valley, the home to the world’s top tech companies, is America’s richest state. According to the available data, the state’s GDP was USD 3.8T in 2023, which was 14% of the country’s GDP. If California were a country, evidence shows, it would rank 5th among the world’s topmost economies, incredibly on top of India and the UK. And yet this same state and its people live and exhibit an ordinary life. How is it possible?

In my view, it is the ingredients, the soul, the insides, the essence of those things, not their externalities. It isn’t necessarily how a Pixel looks; it is what it does! It is not necessarily how Google buildings look, it is what is taking place inside. Silicon Valley is beyond ‘face painting’; these guys have a lot more than they show on their streets!

My visit to Google didn’t make me feel insignificant, less, or anything not measuring up, no! On the contrary, I felt like all I am and have is already too much. But how best can I put it to use? What are the ingredients, the make-up, the substance, the internal value, and the use of what I already have?

My conviction is that it isn’t the abundance and marvellousness of tangibles, but the quality and beauty of the insides, of the souls of us as humans, and the substance of things we use.

Google inspired me to redefine and emphasize quality, uniqueness, and value from within, not from outside. In my view, our everyday people and resources can take us far if their insides or souls or substance or essence is pure and great.

So, yeah, what are you doing with that which you already have or already are? You already have enough. Just amplify it, purify it, maximize it. Be Google. Be the G. Simple at the outside, but the ‘Giant of the World’. #MiklahLife at #Google, #ADIS24, Mandela Washington Fellowship.

Thank you. And keep it #MiklahLife always