The Story of Gtricks in 5 points:
- This blog was setup in response to a random act of kindness.
- From the very beginning (2007) it was clear that the blog-in-making will be dedicated to make people happy about themselves.
- Google is kept as center of focus for this blog because of a lost bet.
- In 2011, I left my full time job to continue this passion.
- A casual idea written on a tissue paper in college canteen became Gtricks business model. The complete story: Back in 2007, I helped a friend on some computer related problem by writing troubleshooting steps in a mail. At that time I was about to graduate and join a large IT organization (Infosys) as a software engineer within a few months. In my desperate attempts to kill free time, I happened to discover Blogspot. For my future reference and to help others, I published those steps in a newly made blogspot blog. Few days later, I started getting emails and comments from strangers thanking me for the solution. Just like any other boy of my age, I was thrilled and happy for helping out people. Suddenly one day, an unknown gentleman offered me a donation for that blog piece. I declined his offer but that random act of kindness laid the foundation of Gtricks. Since that day, I decided to make that unknown person’s happiness as a purpose of this blog. And therefore since inception, Gtricks has only one vision – “To Deliver Happiness”. Initially, I wrote on all sorts of topics that one would find interesting and love to read. But in the same year, a friend from college challenged me to Google everything before actually doing it. I realized that Google always comes up with better ways than I knew. Though I lost the bet, but realized the how better our lives could be if we had all the knowledge from and about Google. Till this date, I am ardent Google fan and will always be. Therefore, I started focusing on applications and unpopular tricks to make most out of Google and its services. There seems to be an alignment between Gtricks mission to deliver happiness and Google. Happiness can be most efficiently delivered by providing value to readers. Writing about useful applications and personal organization tips on Google services result in people working smarter, saving time and increasing their efficiency and ultimately making them happy. In 2011, I was very much contented by my full-time job. In the meantime, Gtricks grew phenomenally and became mildly popular with 2 lakhs page views per month. I then decided to quit my job because it has become extremely difficult to focus on both the aspects. Also, I joined MICA for an MBA course to learn more about Marketing and Branding for Gtricks and to find higher purpose for myself. Some day during that time, I was sitting casually at chotta (MICA’s Canteen) making doodles on tissue papers and suddenly Gtricks model struck me like a God send epiphany. An established system becomes necessary for a blog to run indefinitely. If Gtricks aspire to enrich people lives, it needs proper method to do it in a cordial manner. It needs both revenue and content to maintain its essence. It needs coordination and effort from all. Hence, Gtricks Forum was launched where people can share their opinions and useful tidbits on Google Services. There is now even distribution with evergreen productivity articles on blog and news and troubleshooting in the forum. Anyone can seek help in the forum and army of Google fans will always be ready to guide them. Also, the forum ensures freshness and relevance. So, technically you can say that Gtricks that you are looking now is basically a result of idea written on a tissue paper. Dreaming Big: I have a dream. A dream to deliver happiness. A dream to make people more productive by tools, applications and information that they ought to know. I am preparing for the unseen future. No one knows what it holds for Gtricks. More ever, lives are easily swamped by priorities and uncertainties. Therefore, now Gtricks will be supported by group of editors. Let me welcome our first editor Ansuman Giri, the Wikipedia Guru. He has done more than 13,000 Wiki edits and is proud administrator of Oriya Wiki. Engineer by education, he is slowly learning the basics of blogging. I hope he would prove to be incredibly useful to our community. If you would also like to write for Gtricks, you are always welcome. Allow me to end this article with one of my favorite quotes – “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” (by John Lennon)
