Seriously, WTF Google?

I don't get it, I don't understand how the world's top search engine company and creator of such techno awesomeness can not stop clearly obvious spam from landing in my Gmail in-box every single day.

Does Google really think that I know anyone who's name includes the word "Viagra"?

But what is worse is that there is no simple mechanism for filtering these stupid spams because the Viagra part isn't the sent from email address, its the name in the quotations and the sent from address is, invariably, my own email address which it would be stupid to filter out.

But I can't filter out the quoted sender? Why not?

And I can't just make a blanket filter that scans all email for Viagra and deletes them sight unseen? Why not? This isn't rocket science, or maybe it is, I don't know, I'm not a coder. But it doesn't seem like it should be rocket science. It seems like it should be pretty basic to filter garbage away.

I'm still a very big fan of Google, I like what they do, I like how they do it but this irritating oversight on their part is, well, irritating. Kind of like when they changed how iGoogle home pages were rendered with the ridiculous nav gutter on the left taking up precious screen real estate. No matter how many complaints they've gotten, they didn't allow users to change it back to the tabs. So I've had to install a flippin' Firefox extension to make it the way I want.

Maybe that's the solution with the GMail problem? But it shouldn't be. I shouldn't be looking to third parties for solutions that Google has to be aware of and just hasn't done a damned thing about.

Its dumb and annoying and that's a really short sighted way to treat your customers.

Perhaps Google's mantra should be amended to read "Don't be evil or stupid" but they'll need to work on that second one before they can own it (remember the total fail of the Buzz rollout with no privacy controls? woopsie).

Google Does Its Best Imitation of Microsoft

There's been quite alot of justifiable furor over Google's latest offering, Buzz. It appears that Google stole a page from the Microsoft playbook, the evil playbook. You see, Microsoft has a long and painful history of release and patch software publishing. They'd push an almost done piece of software out with the intention of using early adopters as unpaid and aggravated beta testers.

From a business standpoint this is a solid tactic. Microsoft has grown into the de facto operating system and office suite on the planet largely due to the release and fix philosophy. The only thing is that end users hate being used as non-volunteer guinea pigs. End users just want their shit to work, they don't want to help Microsoft figure out what's wrong and then have them fix it weeks or months later. Its part of the reason I do my best to avoid Microsoft products as much as possible.

And Google has done the same stupid, stupid thing with Buzz, their attempt to destroy Facebook and Twitter. Only they rolled out this new service without bothering to code in end-user controls, important end-user controls like, oh I don't know, privacy, notifications and other pretty basic service requirements. Google has taken information that many people don't necessarily want made public and went ahead and made it public without regard to their customer base's wishes.

And when a company starts acting without the slightest regard to its customers then they are strolling the fine line between good and evil. And Google has publicly stated their philosophy is to not be evil. Well, Google, Buzz is perilously close to being evil in addition to being non-intuitive, oddly slapped into Gmail and in desperate need of some end-user controls. Without some controls on my end, I'm liable to shut if off altogether.

I don't get why Google, ostensibly a very well run "smart" company, would risk pissing off so many users with this half-baked offering. Much like I don't get why Google decided to change how information is displayed on my Google home page where they forced me to put up with a huge space wasting gutter navbar on the left side of the screen. Its only through the use of an extension have I reclaimed that space. Google is well aware of people's hatred of this stupid, unnecessary space waster and yet they do not appear to be planning to do anything to fix it.

How many more missteps will Google make before people really do start think they are just another evil corporation bent on nothing but shareholder profits and maintaining their market shares? Many people already consider Google the next great big evil internet behemoth and its hard to argue against them lately.

Google needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize that end users can be fickle and, when pushed too hard, will just leave Google altogether.

Google needs to fix up its shit before pushing out any more partially finished products like Buzz. Until then, it will flounder and fail.

Google Veers Sharply Towards Teh Evil

Google's philosophy is to not be evil. But they took a rather large step towards Big Brother Evil today when they decided to rearrange how my information is displayed on my iGoogle home page.

They took the tabs from the top of the screen and made a new column along the side which means everything gets squeezed in a little more. The tabs are not closeable, they are not movable, they are expanded so I can now fill the whole page with Gmail (or, you know GO TO MY FUCKING GMAIL DIRECTLY) or with Betwittered.

This change makes absolutely no sense to me as it takes up screen space unnecessarily, there's no way to turn it off or revert to the old and preferred display format and, if other comments are to be believed, I'm one of many, many, many users who are thoroughly pissed off about this unwanted and worthless change.

You feeling me, Google? Change it back or, at the very fucking least, give me the option to change it back. Your improvements SUCK!

[Update: I did come across a rather easy to use workaround. Change your google.com URL to google.ie or google.uk and you'll log into your Google home page in the United Kingdom or Ireland and everything will be where it's supposed to be again. Until Google jacks their pages up too.]

Migrating to Google Reader

It took something slick and nice for me to make the move away from Bloglines and over to Google Reader. Something like, say, a Brand new Google Reader for iPhone which pretty much kicks ass.

That plus Bloglines slow as molasses in January in Anchorage update speeds, the occasional hiccups where they'd grab 200 old, old posts and pretend they were new.

Sorry Bloglines, we partied like it was 1999 for a long time but I've found myself a new feed reader and it integrates with the rest of my Googleverse spectacularly (though I'm not especially thrilled with the iGoogle home page widget).

Also, the ability to embed read articles and posts in a sidebar on the blog is pretty sweet and easy to do which adds alot of utility and practicality to the whole deal.