What used to be a spotless haven for my most personal communications has become increasingly cramped with Google+ clutter, like a list of “friends” I haven’t talked to in five years spewing down the left-hand column, and a tiny bell up top that turns red whenever (multiple times a day) someone (nine out of ten times, I don’t know them) adds me to their G+ circles. Losing Picasa was annoying, but changes to Gmail feel like Google decided to rearrange my bedroom for me while I was at work. Welcome to Gmail, have you heard of Google+?! Don’t believe me? Get out of your Pontiac Aztec and open your eyes. Google’s best products are crumbling, it’s turning off the lights on others, and introducing “new” services that are nothing more than ripped-off ideas from better companies. With the majority of the Web now embracing its products without batting an eye, Google is starting to act less like the ambitious, wide-eyed Silicon Valley upstart it was and more like a lazy, fat-and-happy corporate behemoth coasting on its past successes. The service I once trusted to filter spam out of my email now dumps in its own.Įxcept it sucks in here now. I’ve been swaddled in Google’s comfortable suite of services ever since.
The more Google products I tried, the more I liked, and after seeing Google set the gold standard over and over, I gave up on even trying competitors. Then came Gmail with enough storage space to make me forget the “delete” button forever, and Google Maps, which made MapQuest look like the work of 12-year-old cartographers laboring away in MS Paint. Yahoo and AltaVista just never looked the same after poring over results for “Limp Bizkit lyrics” in Google, which was presumably the type of thing I was searching for around that time. After my first Google Search somewhere around 9th grade, there was no alternative. In my current state of frustration, it’s easy enough to forget, but Google and I used to be inseparable. What the hell happened to you, Google? Decline of an empire And did I ask for this undeletable stack of “Profile photos” mixed in with my neatly organized travel photos? No Google, I did not.
Want to change a cover photo? Good luck finding that option. I want a link, and Google won’t give it to me anymore without hunting madly through its broken interface and (ironically) forcing me to Google Search for the answer. Nor are half my real-life friends – the smart ones. Now when I go to share photos, Google insists on doing it as a Google+ “post” and asks me which of my Circles I would like to share with. Then Google rolled Picasa into Google+ and broke everything by trying to shove me onto its gimpy, dysfunctional social network. It had a robust downloadable editor I could use to tweak and caption photos without being online, copious storage, and slick Web-based galleries I could easily share with a single link. When I moved to Oregon five years ago, Google Picasa became my de facto way to share photos of my adventures with friends and family back home.
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