How do you Google?

It’s not news to suggest that Google has become pretty ubiquitous. For an ever increasing segment of the population, the internet starts on the Google homepage every time they fire up a browser. I would be very surprised if almost every web user in North America or Europe didn’t use Google for at least something.

But everyone uses Google differently. My homepage on both my work laptop and my home network is iGoogle. Where front and center is the pretty cool Google Twitter Gadget. On my work computer I also have a tab for Traffic and Maps on my iGoogle to help me plan the drive home. So I hit 3 features of Google, Search, Maps and a Gadget from Labs, every time I hit the internet. I also have a Gmail tab on my iGoogle, but I rarely use it.

If I’m browsing for fun, almost inevitably, the next thing I do is to pull up my RSS aggregator, Google Reader. I’ve tried a number of different aggregators and readers in the past, but Google Reader is the only one that I have stuck with. I probably have 60-70 feeds in my Reader, 30-40 of which are active.

I also typically pull up my Gmail account, but I find myself using that less and less to read or compose emails, since I typically do that on the Blackberry, I use Gmail mostly for Gtalk if I want to chat or to access “follow up required” type of emails, usually reminders to pay a bill or buy a ticket or something.

Finally, three or four times a week I stop by Google docs to check on community docs, update some of my budget spreadsheets or upload some reports that some of the services I subscribe to generate.

I feel like my usuage is pretty standard, so that was why this article by Techcrunch interested me so much. It was about the top domains (a relative proxy for products) of the various Google domains (as measured by Quantcast) Here was the list.

1. Google Search
2. Google Maps
3. Google Image Search
4. Gmail
5. Google Book Search
6. Google News
7. Google Video Search
8. Picasa
9. Google Earth
10. Google Groups

The fact that Google search is #1 is no surprise. But what did surprised me was that my usage of Google doesn’t really correspond to what is popular. Reader and Docs don’t even make the list, I’ve never used Groups (and was barely aware that it existed), Picasa, Video Search (I assume this is different than Youtube?), I don’t really use News or Book Search (and I’m not even sure what that is).

What is clear, is that Google’s power (as measured by Traffic) is still in its search. This to me is bound to change. Search is great, but I can’t remember the last time that I really had an opinion about a search engine, or the last time I felt really a lot of value-add input came from my engine. I use Google to search , but almost as a after thought. What I VALUE from Google is their mail, the storage they provide, the ease and convenience of sharing documents, maps to help me get home and the service they provide in aggregating all the sites I read and follow.

I might be wrong, but I don’t think that Google’s strength and power lie in growing search, but in cranking out quality products like Reader and Gmail and quickly killing distracting and depreciative products like Orkut (although I hear that is big in Brazil, or is that Friendster? Who cares?) and Google Video.

But I could be wrong, clearly more people touch Google via search than through reader.

How do you Google? Let us know.