The recent storm in the anti-blogosphere about Google acquiring Feedburner, the frightening prospect of Google placing ads in your precious feeds, capturing all your personal data, monitoring your every movement (online and offline) and logging your brainwaves into the Google data warehouse is starting to irritate me.
Despite the corporate motto, please remember Google is evil and 2084 is just around the corner, folks. Be aware that Google just announced a partnership with global law enforcement agencies to upload all CCT footage to YouTube.
Thankfully, some intelligent people are able to distance themselves from the hype and present a more balanced viewpoint.
Another irritant is idiots bleating, ironically enough, in Google Groups about the lack of monthly reports in the revamped Analytics and deficiencies in Reader.
If you don’t like Analytics V2, go back to Site Meter to track your e-commerce site. Let me know how you get on.
If you can’t stand Reader, shut up and go back to Bloglines and moan about that instead.
If you can no longer tolerate the unreliability and limitations of Docs and Spreadsheets, upgrade to Office 2007 and use Word and Excel. The choice is yours.
I use a lot of Google products (Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Analytics, Notebook, Desktop, Bookmarks, IG, Docs, Groups, Webmaster, Adsense oh and, err that Search thingy). My view is that all are excellent, innovative software products and, best of all, completely free of charge.
I really don’t care that Google has stored every single keyword related to my searches from October 1991.
I honestly don’t care that Google has copies of my homework excuses and letters to the Inland Revenue. Believe me, the contents are really not that earth shattering.
I truly don’t care that Google has copies of every single email I have ever sent and received because, surprisingly, I have nothing to hide. I only wish Google could get behind corporate firewalls and retrieve the remainder as I have lost some magnificent blogging material over the years.
If you are genuinely worried that Google is going to tell you what to ‘eat for tea’, maybe you should do the world a favour and start a protest on behalf of all Interweb users by going on an indefinite hunger strike. Immediately.
If you are a child molester or jumped the turnstiles last night in Athens, then, by all means, please disable all cookies, use Ask.com or give your computer to charity.
As for me, I am putting my money where my mouth in. The next purchase in my SIPP will be the purchase of £7,000 of GOOG stock. Tomorrow.