I once hung out with an MIT math PHD candidate.. he had a crush on my sister... poor guy.. I asked him what he wanted to do after graduation, and he said work for google. He said they were so far ahead it was amazing.
For years, google doesn't fuck up. They kept giving amazing products away, like this one, Blogger, and they fueled a change int he world, a real revolution that likely led to things like the Arab spring and who knows what else.. enlightenment was no further than a few key strokes away.. 7 Billion people on this earth and what must be a computer for about half of em.. even 5 years ago there was still only a computer for one in every ten. For years is was IBM and TI, then apple and personal computing began, Microsoft and it exploded and with democratic principles, re-branded mac, but then the Google era began. It seemed like computers were achieving everything we dreamed of, and all that is left is what we have left to dream or possibly even want, like self driving cars and google glasses.. but they took us to the Nth, they translated and blogged us, made the world so small, showed us every video conceivable and seemed like a benign force.. most importantly of all, they answered the questions we asked, and exercised restraint, seemed to find a balance between greed and service.. but about a year and a half ago, and I remember because I happened to be in San Fran at the time, and visiting a friend whose hubby was an exec there, I started to notice they were fucking up. But these guys are too smart to fuck up by accident.. what seems like a fuckup must have been something else.. Google was finally cashing in. This was maybe new years of 2014.
I started to notice it.. progress on the things that I needed improved seemed to stop, and my searches started to become less reliable.. it used to be I only had to search for something once.. but now, it was like the first three terms or so, usually so reliable, were things I didn't want.. I was learning, not shopping, but like Yahoo, Bing, and Ask Jeeves from 10 years ago,Google seemed to have forgotten how to fetch properly.. it would bring me what it wanted to bring me, the ball not my slippers, and it would sometimes just wander off. I might have been taking it for granted, but it's a computer not a dog, and I can't scratch it behind the ears to redeem it or save our relationship. it feels a bit powerless.
I remember when google became indispensable. I avoided the internet in college, stuck to books and libraries, had a student email address but never checked it, and when I did, months before graduation, I had 3000 messages but none were personal. I got into email and forged ahead, but I could tell a few of my more sophisticated friends, Ivy League types, had already moved on, were bored of email.. They already had facebook in their schools and everything was so public, but I was catching up, and they kept talking about something called 'Google Search'. This was in the early oughts. My dependence on books had been wise.. the Dewey Decimal System was as yet uncorrupted by commerce... truth was still truth, but yahoo and it's buddies were obvious whores.. helping me correctly about one in three times..surfing the net was an avocation, not a profession, and it yielded quirky and often times hilarious results, but it wasn't something to be trusted for serious matters... then along came google. It did what you asked it to.. like Microsoft had done to the typewriter, it destroyed the library.. it gave you what you wanted, free and consistently, and then it gave me better, better email, and then 20 other things I never dreamed I wanted but now feel I need: cloud storage, images, maps. amazing maps and geography tools, phone calls and even texting.. all for free.. it was incredible.. how much value did google create.. incalculable.. how man things did I accomplish because of it.. 10,000 emails later from me setting up a gmail account.. I can't even fathom.. I was a late adopter.. I assumed the market was competative, created parity.. that yahoo, hotmail and gmail must all be basically the same.. my girlfriend must be the same as my buddies girlfriend, not even curious. How wrong I was! someone talked me into a Gmail account and it kicked the shit out of hotmail.. not even close.. I became more sophisticated and my work improved, my life got better. I skipped Facebook entirely, never got a phone... google gave me all of that and I didn't want to venture into the world of wants from needs.. google was meeting all my needs and that was all the time I wanted to spend online, in front of hte box with lights.. the world got ahead, went to snapchat and twitter, novelized what for me just needed to be functional, and I almost felt proud to be so loyal to a company that gave me what I needed and not what it thought I wanted, but that began to change..
Again, around new years of 2014, new things seemed to go stale, not improve, and when they did improve, there were fuck ups... things weren't better often, just different, or they sucked.... they took away free texting.. does this mean I have to get a phone to keep up with the hectic Jones, who don't even answer their phone anymore because it's too time consuming to talk?
They would create things and let them go fallow.. google drive.. awesome idea, ran whole projects with it, but it sat.. it was like a government service. somehow I had paid for it, and somehow it worked for me, like roads and mail delivery.. but it wasn't so simple.. Snowdon popped out and told me I maybe should have only trusted Yahoo, even though they didn't quite have their shit together anymore.. and forget the government, corporate privacy became the real issue.. they were pimping me out for ad revenue..
I guess there are no free lunches and I should have known better, but they hid it well for so long and didn't seem to be missing meals.. they were already rich and seemed happy them google guys.. but maybe they thought all the value was on speculation, and that if they didn't try to make moves to monetize, in that american express way, from the businesses, if they didn't sell their soul to someone, it would be too late.. the next game changer would come along and it would all be for naught.. all that value and service created, just a waste of humanitarian time.. that doesn't buy a car elevator and a G-5 trip to the Disruptive Technology Convention ( yes that's a real thing, and trust me they go! and they wear lot's of silicon valley colors.. earthy toned suits, the Palo Alto Pallet, low key but truly expensive.)..
So I don't know what was worse.. knowing they were cashing in, were making an intense turn around to cash in everywhere they could but directly from me, or knowing that that greed was making them complacent, that that calling utility that I actually did pay for, was now getting even shittier, not just not improving, and that my browser seemed to reload more and more when I now have a bandwidth and monthly limit, and that cool little things like the tabs going away to make my page bigger seemed to not work anymore... it's a slow slip, but they are right.. they have me, who the fuck is even close.. I usually get out quick when it's slipping.. it's like staying with a girl because you don't have a truck to move your stuff.. but this is different.. no girl does this much for me.. blogger, drive, voice, hangout.. I'm settled down but she's distracted and in genuine, but man, it's gunna be hard to explain this to anyone.. it's subtle, but it seems like the smartest are noticing.. I don't live in a place like New York to know what the buzz is ( I live in a place that has bandwidth limits and doesn't even touch the mainland US!) but something tells me if I plugged in, they might be talking about some other bad ass thing that is filling that hole, Duck Duck Go or some other thing, but I'm here with the hoi palloi, and I do feel like years of good will are being monetized, and it's unsettling.. like a dad asking me to pay him back for college.. it just feels wrong even if it was always part of he plan.. why, dad why.. why google why.. can't you hide it like you did all these years?
Ways Google is slipping:
Google Circles was absurd... why compete with facebook poorly? it spread you too thin, nd made mefeel like you are playing with my privacy
- Search results more and more obviously influenced
- phone call utility sucks
- tab hiding option gone
- Blogger unimproved in like 3 years
- Hangout also stagnant, and confused by circles..
- Less reliable browser, almost your most important tool after google search
- Translate seems to be stumped more often, and isn't getting better
- Spell checker, again, stagnant
- They dropped the texting service, didn't even let me pay for it
- Why does Google Photos keep assembling stories for me? it's Single White Female creepy
- The whole thing to foist Google Circles onto me seemed so desperate.
- How much have they whored themselves to Constitutional Violations by private contractors and the NSA? I kind of want to know.
- Streetview is amazing.. can't you make it actually work smoothly? If we put a man on the moon today you would have been responsible, but streetview works like a video game from the DOS days.
- I still can't create groups with my gmail address book and do simple business things.. is this a patent issue or are you just lagging?
- all of this becomes more absurd when you realize that google is becoming a Green utility, a car company, a glasses manufacturer, a cell phone company and who knows what else.. they are loosing track of the bread and butter, a sign of boredom and decadence at the tippy top, the same thing that happened to Microsoft when they got away from XP to Vista just to make more money in 2006. It's jumped the shark but they still make money because the same people who still love incandescent bulbs still want to play Deer Hunter on the same computer they had 10 years ago.
