Google is starting to piss me off
November 21, 2008 at 11:55 am
I use iGoogle as my default home page both at home and at work. I carefully selected the set of gadgets I wanted on that page and arranged them just so that I can quickly reach the websites I use frequently. Perfect.
Then Google, in their infinite wisdom, decides to force all iGoogle users to have a left-side tab navigation bar. I’m quite jealous of my screen real estate and resented Google unilaterally deciding to steal some of it. I eventually got over it. I don’t use the left-side navigation at all, but I learned to just ignore it.
This morning, I log in at work and open a web browser to discover Google has added a chat area in the left-side navigation bar, which I apparently can’t remove. How very annoying is that. Worse, it looked like I was signed into their chat system automatically. Even more annoying.
I’ve always been impressed with the smart and savvy way the people at Google handled themselves and their business. The original incarnation of their search page, with just the Google logo and the search box, was brilliant and helped them crush the competition in the search engine space when everyone else was larding their search home page with ads and other irrelevent BS. iGoogle was a welcome addition for me, but now Google is starting to screw it up. After I’m done here, I’ll be registering a complaint with Google about the chat box on my iGoogle page.
Categories: Computing
I totally agree; I ignore the ridiculous, and space wasting, left side bar too. I’ve just started using their browser; Chrome. These are the same people who gave us, and got us hooked on, auto form fill with their toolbar, and decided not to put it in their own browser. Yes, they piss me off too. I was among many who raised hell over the homepage redesign fiasco. I’ve decided that Google is going too do wtf Google wants. What I don’t get is: who at Google sees these blunders as improvements?