The e-pocalypse is upon us. In a good way.
The University has decided to partner up with Google to make the mail system here at TJ's stomping grounds about a trillion times better. In a move announced by Student Council President Lauren Tilton, Chief Information Officer James Hilton and ITC, U.Va. Gmail will debut this fall and completely revolutionize the way students don't pay attention in class.
Don't be fooled -- I'm a big believer in the wonders of Gmail. It's an addiction. I need Gmail more than our football team needs a new coach. More than Louie Anderson needs candy corn. More than anything. Not to mention Gmail Chat, which is vastly superior to AOL Instant Messenger. G-chat is to AIM what Facebook is to MySpace: Once you get to college, things get a little more sophisticated.
Perhaps there's some exaggeration there. Regardless, Google really does have tons of good ideas. The partnership with the University simply brings the Palo Alto search engine juggernaut one step closer to taking over the entire Internet. In all honesty, nothing even comes close to the amount of convenience and ease that Google brings into the average Web-surfer's life. The very word "Google" (capital "G") has entered the mainstream English lexicon. What other dot-com can claim such a feat?
Google has it all. The nerdiest of all societal cliques, the Internet trolls, have long known that Google is much more than a search engine used to figure out exactly who played Mark on "Step by Step." In case you're wondering, it was Christopher Castile. I actually knew that off the top of my head. Feel free to stop reading here.
Google's move to branch outside the e-niverse into the realm of public/private partnerships raises some important ethical questions. Which comes first for institutions of higher education, business partnerships or the promulgation of knowledge? What does it mean that students are dependent upon something out of the University's hands? The most important question though, of course, is, "How do we recognize that Google has ceased to exist as programmable software and moved into the realm of self-awareness?" Simple answer -- when you attempt to Google Mark from "Step by Step" and your search result comes up as, "Really? You want to look up Mark from 'Step by Step?' Really? Really?" in huge font, then you know you've got a problem. I'd give Google about three years, one month and 17 days until it starts to feel feelings. The only way to destroy Google at that point is to Google "Google," whereupon the world will implode into infinite nothingness. Or, we can simply teach Google to love. That should do the trick.
There are a few other Internet sites to have the rare honor of becoming transitive verbs used by geeks: Google, Wiki, IMDb, Facebook, YouTube and a few others. It's doubtful that professors will allow Wikipedia as a primary-source document or post lectures on YouTube if the University partners up with the video-sharing pioneers. (Pioneers that are also owned by Google. Is there no end to the madness?!)
Even still, the idea of the University of Virginia and Google holding hands as we march into the future just seems like a great idea. This might be the best partnership since peanut butter and jelly, since Tango and Cash or since Disney and Pixar. Still, I can't help but lament the departure of Gmail as one of the Internet's too-good-to-be-true phenomena. In the past, a potential Gmailer had to be invited by a current Gmailer in order to gain access to the service. Recently, however, Google pulled a Facebook and now allows any nut job with a computer the ability to freely be on the cusp of Internet technology. I suppose that's the way life goes. Google is here to stay.
Brenden Collins is a Cavalier Daily Life columnist. His column runs weekly on Monday. He can be reached at collins@cavalierdaily.com.
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