I was initially a big fan of Google+, and I still think it is a more privacy friendly social networking platform than Facebook. However, Google’s insistence on real names in the service is concerning. I’ve always used my real name online, but I certainly understand that for many people, there are very good reasons to not do that. Abuse victims, people that follow any sort of out-of-the-mainstream lifestyle, and corporate or government officials with a need to whistleblow all have very legitimate reasons to maintain a shield between their online identity and their real identity.
I’ve got 7 years of email archives in Gmail. I have dozens of documents in GDocs. I’ve been using GReader since 2006 or so. I have years of photos in Picasa. And like everybody else on the planet, Google is my default search engine. Of course, all these services are used cash free by me. Google makes it very convenient to use their services, mainly because they work so damn well. In fact, with the introduction of the black Google toolbar on their services, it is apparent that Google is essentially building the nex-gen AOL. AOL was, in its heyday, a totally walled garden. The wall around Google will be more like a white picket fence. However, I was never a fan of the the AOL approach, and I’m starting to question why Google doing essentially the same thing is any better. At the end of the day, AOL and Google have exactly the same goal, sell as much advertising as possible by keeping the users (the product) on the site as long as possible. And the reality is that Google knows far more about its users than AOL ever did. Google may be executing the strategy 1000% better, but is that any reason to accept it this time if we didn’t when AOL tried it?
Back in the AOL heyday, all my email went through ODonnellweb, a server I pay for and thus have more control over. When I wanted to share photos I added a photo sharing application to my web server. When I wrote a document I used a word processor on my computer. I’m not anti-cloud, but I’m thinking I may want to distribute my life across several clouds. Like maybe move my email off of Gmail, use DuckDuck Go to search,use Zoho Docs instead of GDocs, and leave my photos at Picasa.
What do you think? Am I onto something here, or am I just being paranoid?
Edit: From the comments, Why I do not want to work at Google
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Related food for thought: Why I do not want to work at Google: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/000938.html
I am sympathetic to many of the issues in this post, esp. the Nymwars issue, of which you can probably guess which side I come down on.
That’s a great link Daniel. I’m going to promote to the post. And as step 1, I’ve just changed the default search engine in Firefox to DuckDuckGo.
Speaking of, you should meet Gabriel Weinberg if you get a chance. He lives about 1/2 hr. north of me in Valley Forge. He keeps inviting me to the meetup they have every month in Philly but I haven’t been able to go yet because of one conflict or another. Really an incredibly smart younger guy who knows how to do almost everything himself old school style. I still can’t believe one guy is competing with GOOG and actually getting users. He even sent me a bunch of DDG stickers earlier this year; he dropped them in the mail himself (regular stamp– no business class mail).
His list of failed side projects is inspiring.
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/10/a-history-of-failed-projects.html
I just saw this post in Google Reader, complete with an adwords ad inviting the reader to download chrome
If you’re paranoid, then I’m leaning that way too.
I killed off my Google+ account last week. I’ve stopped using Gmail as a spam filter. I’ve started using (gasp) Bing. In short I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with Google’s having this amazing advertising profile on me. And that’s what it is, really; they know a ton of information about me which can allow them to sell me more stuff. And I kind of don’t want more ads in my life, even if they *are* completely targeted specifically towards me.
I’m also concerned about Google being equated with the internet for most people. I mean, they’ve got a mobile device platform, a social network, a TV interface, a search engine, a blogging platform, a photo sharing service, a news-gathering service, a news aggregator, a mail client, an OS, a browser, and are starting high-speed access trials en masse. It’s a big walled garden!
My biggest problem with Google in the tech industry is that all these startups aspire to be purchased by Google… and when Google buys a startup they almost always just kill the startup. Guess it makes sense strategically for Google but doesn’t make sense for me as a user of those services.
Then next comes the AOLization that you’ve mentioned. I accept that I surrender privacy as the price of using Google’s services (gmail, docs, reader) though things have gone too far. Fortunately I haven’t found Google+ very useful (but I use Facebook which is just giving up my privacy to another company).
I switched to Duck Duck Go two weeks ago because it is a better search engine.
The ads on gmail haven’t bothered me much as far as the “personalization”, but the other day I sent friends an email about meeting up Thursday at the park and a time. Google wanted to add “Park” to Thursday, September 8th at 1pm to my google calendar. It kind of weirded me out to have it pick that much info out of my email, especially since I only put “next Thursday”. If it starts mapping the location of the park for me, I’m outta there.
@Christine when you provide an address, yes it maps it. You think they’d let Google Maps integration go to waste? Fortunately “park” isn’t enough of a description, but I’m sure you’ll see in the next couple of years a prompt asking you which park you meant from a list of likely candidates based on your present location.