Sunday, June 15, 2008

Google Wisdom

As of 5:13 Pacific time on Sunday June 15th, 2008:

The number of results on google was:

28,300,000 for meaning of life

605,000,000 for reason
1,480,000,000 for why?
1,760,000,000 for art
2,380,000,000 for love

69,200,000 for stanford
1,030,000 for stupid web searches
265,000 for reasonable bananas
149,000 for mohawked monkeys
135,000 for toliet paper (9,470,000 for toilet paper)

470,000 for sitting at your laptop with nothing to do

2,870 for Urvashi Nagrani
257 for Urvi Nagrani
(= 3127 for me)

Using this scale:

Love is greater than all.
Art is second best.
Ask questions later.
Reason will follow.
Stanford is above the meaning of life.
Stupid web searches are more common than sitting at your laptop with nothing to do.
There are more reasonable bananas than mohawked monkeys.
Even “toliet paper” is noteworthy.
And I’m the most insignificant thing I’ve thought about today.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Dear Blogger: I hate the new you.

Dear Blogger

I do not like or approve of you being acquired by Google. At first I was okay with it because my blogger experience remained the same. Your beta version was optional and I could ignore it. But that is no longer the case.

Now that I have been forced to merge my account, in order to log in I have to type 18 characters as my username (8 characters, an at sign, and then 9 characters more) and that’s inconvenient. I was with blogger long enough to have a 3 letter name the 15 extra characters now required to log in- piss me off. In addition the dashboard is cluttered,.the big blue links look child like and take too much room, the settings are such that less than 2/3 of the screen is being used and the remaining space is wasted on the color beige (Which is boring and useless.) . Your new features, I don’t need or want. If I wanted a private blog I’d go use my LiveJournal. I’m patient enough to wait for my publishing. Your dashboard sucks. And if I really wanted a more interesting template I’d write it myself.

The feature I really want? To have your service unaltered. To use the same basic program I have enjoyed the last 5 years. To have a 3 letter name which I could not get using google. And despite record profits, creating many millionaires and hiring hundreds of brilliant people- google does not include that in it’s agenda. So blogger- I’m sorry to say: You suck. You’ve sold out, you’re being repackaged in a way which is degrading, and you’re becoming worse at providing the basic services your company was meant to provide in order to add unnecessary features.

And Google? I don’t care if you’re a billion dollar company with technology from everything from GPS and former NASA programs to online shopping services. I have nothing against monopolies. But I do have issues with company’s eliminating portions of companies they acquire and in doing so degrading the service. It’s not that you’re a monopoly, it’s that you made a very useful and capable service dumbed down to a kindergarten level to the point where it’s degrading to the user, and annoying to look at. It’s like going from a classic wooden playground to useless pieces of shinny plastic: safe, stupid, obnoxious and in no way fun.

Sincerely disappointed in being forced to deal with you jokers

Urv. Oh wait. That username is dead. Because of you.
UNagrani@gmail.com
15 characters too many to sign in.

Labels: , , , , , ,