I'm fucking done with you Google.
Here is my public rage post. I have been a fan of Google ever since I swapped over from Yahoo way, wayyyy back in the day but Google is making every effort humanly possible to make Google search a miserable experience.
First and foremost there is the new +1 nonsense. You can't opt-out of it, especially if it means nothing to you. There are rumored ways to fix it, but they want you to be logged in under a profile. I want a cookie that says 'don't give me +1 ever that is dumb' and Google to actually follow it. If I wanted Google to be Facebook I'd use Facebook. I don't like Facebook, in fact I hate it with a passion. I don't want to 'like' things, I just want to log in and get the job done and being a worksafe search engine is something I actually liked about Google.
Secondly, voice search. What? Why? Why can't I opt out of it? I'm never going to fucking use it. It's not even passably cool technology. I use my microphone to talk to other people and if I wanted to talk to computers I'd write an AI.
Thirdly, Instant Search. It has its place but I rarely want to use it. Sure if I am searching for one word or whatever its fine but if I want to search for things in a moderately complex query it just goes nuts and shows me nothing useful. On slower computers and especially slower internet it is clunky and miserable. The actual on web page experience is worse than using the browser's search and that is just silly on so many levels.
Fourth, Google+. Orkut failed fyi. If you forgot. My profile is still out in the open and you give me equivalent stupidity in privacy control. A direct link gets you to my profile every time and you can't make 100% of the information private or even come up blank. I'm not a public figure or a 'known somebody' I'm a nobody and I like it that way. My friends should know me, and I should be able to find more friends through my friends. My link shouldn't be something that you can post on a website (like 4chan or reddit) and have a thousand hits on my profile going through my information, or have the tools to create spoof profiles and dupe other people through social engineering. If you give people ammunition why shouldn't they use it? Regardless why does it now have to be integrated with everything? I don't want it to be integrated with everything. My Gmail is used for BUSINESS. It's not for seeing who popped out a baby last Thursday. I got a Google+ account on invite but clearly it was a huge mistake.
Anyway I am checking out alternate search engines based on this. I liked what Google was doing but now they are trying to Yahoo-ify everything and that's part of the reason why I switched to Google in the first place. Old Google gave me a box to let me search and showed me ads to print money. New Google is spastic user interface that is poorly balanced and filled with silly buttons and stupid crap I don't want that make ads less noticeable, which probably results in less money. $535 a share? Can't fucking wait to see it under $300.
Posted Jul 12, 2011, 7:52 PM UTC
You don't have to use any of these new features. All that is different is a little +1 by the links and a little microphone on the search bar. You can easily ignore these, and it will be the same Google as before. They aren't forcing anything on you.
Yes, but +1 can be clicked on accident at all times and the only way to remove it is through browser shenanigans. It's hard to ignore the +1 button when you accidentally mouse over NEAR the button and it flickers and blinks. e.g.: when my pointer is at the edge of the div. I've tried ignoring them and I wouldn't be as upset if I could. If the negative blank space of the page isn't something I can leave my mouse without annoyance where am I supposed to put it?
Again my problem is that they have taken three killer Business apps that there aren't really an equivalent to (except search I suppose) of Google Search, Calendar and GMail and keep pushing them to be not work safe. Putting social networking crap all over it just makes it one more thing I have to figure out how to block as an IT person and one more thing to get in my way day to day.
The voice chat just seems stupid. I have less problem with it than the other complaints but it just seems pointless. GOOG-411 was actually a good service I used several times, but most people don't have a mic hookup to their computer and the people that do won't use it more than once or twice. Sure if you are disabled that is a really KILLER feature, but it should be something that can be opted in to and just not more crap to load every time I try to search for a recipe for chili.