I’ve finally had enough of Google.
Yesterday, their new, psychic “Google Instant” product went live, and I don’t really like it. I’m not going to go down the path of advertisers or search engine optimisation companies who are concerned about their business models being significantly affected, but as a user, I just think it’s a change I can’t be doing with.
I really don’t want Google to try to second-guess what I want to look for. I know, 99% of the time, what I want to search for. I found the constant reloading of pages in the background distracting. Who gets to decide what terms are “suggested” first?
Is this change for the sake of change? Does an extra five seconds to let the user finish typing and hit enter really matter? Or is society really that impatient?
I’m also somewhat aggrieved at Google’s recent “innovations” being, in summary, a complete lift-and-copy of the Bing search UI. I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, though.
I also have grave misgivings about Google’s attitudes toward user privacy. Yes, this blog is hosted on a Google service, but that’s as far as I’ll go with the company. I don’t leave personal information on my blog. I’m very wary of the fact that Google isn’t really a search company – it’s an advertising company. That’s really all it boils down to.
But alas, I did need to break my muscle-memory of clicking the Google button on my favourites bar. I tried deleting it and using the Bing button, but I was so used to the position of the Google icon, I couldn’t quite get to grips with it.
Sorry, Google. If you go back to being the idealistic, pioneering company you were back in 1999 I’ll be back, as opposed to this… monster you are now. Until then, I’m Bingin’ it.
Richard I have found it hard to disagree with anything you have said in your previous blog posts... but I disagree STRONGLY with this post!
ReplyDelete...Just out of curiosity, why do you conclude that Google have mimicked Bing's Interface?
I'll list a few of the UI features that I believe Bing has "inspired" in Google:
ReplyDelete- Large-size search box
- Vertical search options on results pages
- The infamous background image fiasco that Google faced
- Self-refreshing Twitter search
I just dislike Instant for trying to second-guess me as a user. It's a change too far, for me. Some people like it, yes, but I don't, especially when it keeps "forgetting" my preference to disable the thing.
I've been using Bing constantly for 5 days now, and it's been pretty successful. The results I get are just as good as Google.
I'm also glad that you like my blog, and even better that you commented on something you disagree on. Gotta love provoking debate. Cheers for reading :)
Even though it may seem that Google has copied bing with its design, I can tell you June 2009 was the month in which Bing was announced to the world wide web and the same month in which the world got a first peek at Google's new UI on their .com domain. So to me it provokes a thought that maybe there was some collaboration to obtain the perfect UI design for their users? To us it seems as if Google has copied Bing but thats because the new styles were available to us since November 2009 on the .co.uk domain which most UK IP's are forwarded to.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post reminds me of the time Facebook implemented new features and a new design to be greeted by rebellion of the majority of users. When all that these changes did was to improve user experience, allow vaster integration with other popular web services (e.g. YouTube)and pushed it to become the ever increasingly powerful social tool it is today! This is similar to your dislike of Google for their new implementations. I believe these reactions are due to the human instinct to disagree with change.
For a heads up if you keep an eye out at http://www.googlelabs.com/ you will be able to see all of their new ideas before they "graduate" them to being available in the live community.
As for your comment on Google being an advertising company, Yes they have been built up to the massive corporation they are today because of their Adwords and Adsense Services, but this is only a minuscule part of the vast services they offer. I'll leave it up to you if you want to research into the many services they offer and here are a few links to start:
http://code.google.com/
http://www.google.org/
http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en_uk/
http://www.google.co.uk/options/
The aim of this comment was not to try and prove you wrong with any of your views, but to try and empower you with knowledge of other views and opinions. Look forward to reading a reply!